Mountain 26 – Brides Les Baines, Les Tres Vallees, France – The Final Epic Race Day!

Greg Hydle Devin Rhinehart Ashley Cooley Kaylin Richardson Bill Charlie Fiveash

Well I’m writing this post two days after the race (not a lot of free time and poor internet connections), but I will recap how the day went for us in full detail! The morning started off for us around 6 am since we wanted to get prepared and be fully ready to go at 9 am when the race officially started.

We had scoped out our places the day before – we drove through Brides les Baines, Les Allues and scoped out all of the landmark type places around town that we thought would be potential places for us to hit. Also, when we skied Meribel, we tried to get familiar with all of the lifts and landmark type places on the mountains also.

We had all agreed that our best place to start was down in Brides les Baines (fyi – there is no skiing in Brides les Baines, it is just a town at lower elevation that has a gondola lift that takes you up the mountains to the base of Meribel where the skiing actually starts – Les Allues is a little higher up the mountain but still has no skiing, only has a gondola stop taking you up to Meribel also). Our theory was that we would be faster at running through town in our tennis shoes, having our skies and boots stashed at the base of the gondola in Brides (in our car so they wouldn’t get stolen/cold/wet) and then keeping our tennis shoes on for Les Allues also and just stashing our skis and boots by the gondola again, and then changing into our ski boots on the final gondola ride up from Les Allues and tossing our tennis shoes off to the side at the top, skiing over to the correct lift, and then finishing the race at the top. We chose this path because if we would have skied first, we would have had to ski down, and then ski or run in the snow back up to the gondola which would have been a lot tougher for me at least because I’m pretty bad at skating on my skis (and also we figured if the final clue was at the top of the mountain, it would save one small leg of actually skiing back down the slope to finish at the bottom two gondola rides).

So, we started in the center of town in Brides. Some people started in line at the Brides lift gambling that the location that Vail would require us to hit would simply be riding the lift. From the emails we had received from Vail, we assumed we would be having to find something actually in town, and since the gondola was on the outside of town, we decided to begin right in the center of town.

The email with all of our clues and locations for each town came out right at 9 am. Everyone was on their phones ready to run, however I don’t think anyone expected the clues to be as difficult as they were initially. Vail made the clues tough in order to try to slow us down and spread us out, amazing race style, and it worked.

For Brides les Baines, the clue we decided to go with was “This street is named after an assassinated French politician, and the number is the number of consecutive world titles Lindsey Vonn has won” – it tooks us longer than we thought to figure out the name of the street that was named after an assassinated French politician, since obviously there was more than one, and there are a lot of town names in Brides also. Fortunately for us, we had befriended Bill and Charlie Fiveash – a father and son team from Canyons, Utah (Charlie is only 13!). We had hung out with them several times from running into them throughout the trip so it helped on the last day to be buddies with them. Somehow Bill figured out the name of the French politician matching a street name in Brides was Joseph Feranet, so he pointed at the map where we needed to go, said “oh come with us, we want you guys to win too” and started running.

Hydle and Rhinehart at first weren’t totally sure if it was the hunger games and if they were trying to throw us off, but I trusted them because I knew they wouldn’t be running in a direction just to throw us off. I figured I could google Feranets name as we were running to confirm, which is what I started to do. I yelled at Hydle and Rhinehart to follow and that I was confirming it was true, and they kinda followed me, but at a slower pace because they were still working on the clues. (We had decided before the race started that we would try to be calculated and smart before frantically taking any actions, which is kinda what I was doing, but I also felt confident Bill knew the French politicians name correctly, especially because Brides is a small town with not a lot of street names).

While running, I pulled up Google Maps, and found the exact address of 6 (world titles for Lindsey Vonn) and Joseph Feranet street. I had the map feature route me straight to that address, and while running (assuming Hydle and Rhinehart were following me still) I saw Bill and Charlie one street above us (they missed the left turn). Since they had helped us initially on finding the Feranet street, I yelled to them that they had missed their turn and that they needed to follow me because I had it on maps.

Bill, Charlie and me found the address shortly after, and there was a red gondola there, so we figured that had to be the location. We stalled for a second trying to figure out where the Epic Race sticker actually was – and Charlie looked around and found it on the side. We were the second group of people to get our video taken in front of that gondola that morning.

I had assumed Hydle and Rhinehart had been following me the whole time in my frantic distraction of finding the sticker with Bill and Charlie, and when I looked back, I realized they weren’t anywhere to be seen. I had a minor panic when I thought I may have lost them (not a good thing to do during a foot race like this) but since our team had a lot of notoriety by the end of this race, I yelled at the next guy who was running toward the gondola “Hey did you see Hydle and Rhinehart back there?” and the guy said “Yea they’re back there still” – so I ran back to where the guys were standing (a few hundred yards back still) and said “what are you guys doing? I already found the sticker, it’s over there at the red gondola, hurry!”

They were like “you didn’t tell us you knew where it was, you should have told us to follow you” and I said “I thought you were following me, I didn’t realize I didn’t make it clear that I knew where I was going!” and then I thought about running back to the gondola with them again, but then they yelled at me to just keep running back to the gondola at the base of Brides, which they were right about. They were way faster runners than I was, so Hydle tossed me the car key (where we had stashed our skis and boots at the base of the Brides gondola) and said to hurry over there and grab the skis for all of us.

They were so much faster than me, that they ran to the red gondola, got their videos taken, and then ran back and still caught back up with me before we even got halfway back to the Brides lift. Rhinehart was super fast and grabbed the key from me, ran ahead and took out my skis and boots for me, and hoofed them up the stairs to the gondola for me. He yelled at me to just keep running all the way up to the gondola, and yelled at Hydle to grab the poles and his own skis.

I was SO tired by this point, it must have been a ¾ mile total run at full sprint in ski gear, sweating our butts off, but as we were climbing the stairs up to the gondola, the Vail team was there cheering us on, and a couple video and camera guys were shooting us. Rhinehart had already loaded up my skis for me (what a champ) into the gondola, so I dove into it with him right as it was about to leave the loading area. Hydle was behind us so he had to jump into the next one behind us. I also had a small moment of panic there when I asked Rhinehart if he had grabbed my ski boots, and fortunately he had!

We immediately dove into trying to solve our next round of clues for Les Allues. The clues were legitimately tough. But there was a riddle that said

“What am I?
A mountain is tall, but I have more stories.
I don’t have ski runs, but I do have aisles.
You have an Epic Pass, but I have many Epics.”

I assumed this was the church, which we had scoped out earlier and knew how to get to. I mean, churches have stories, aisles and epics. Hydle got off his gondola and I said I thought it was the church and he agreed, so we all went for it and ran straight to the church. Probably another ¾ mile round trip run. Turns out, we found out later that clue was actually for the public library which was RIGHT across the street from the gondola. Duh, makes sense that libraries also have stories, aisles and epics, but when you’re in a rush, things don’t seem as obvious as they do in hindsight. Bummer we missed this because we did know where the library was, and if we could have found the sticker there instead of the church, it probably would have saved us 5 minutes total, which I think would have definitely put us really close into all being in the full running for the epic pass. Orelle!

Bill, Charlie, Hydle, Rhinehart, and Vail videographer friend, Eric ran full sprint to the Church where Hydle was the first to find the sticker. We all snapped our photos, and ran back as fast as we could to the gondola. Everyone was faster than me again, but they were so cool about waiting for me to catch up, grab my skis, and Hydle, Rhinehart and Eric (videographer) jumped into the gondola for our final ride up to Meribel where skiing actually begins.

We put our ski boots on in the gondola, and everyone agreed that they knew the last clue would be to get up to the top of the Toughnette lift (it turns out you could take either gondola from the Meribel base and find an epic sticker at the top). I had no idea how to solve the puzzles for Meribel, but the guys seemed confident they knew where they were going, so I went with it. (I’m not great at maps, and navigating ski areas, so the whole week I hadn’t really been on top of navigating, but the guys had assured me they would have me back when it got to the skiing part at Meribel since they were pretty comfortable with navigating the lifts and the resort).

At the top of the gondola ride, which leads you to the base area where all the lifts and gondolas are to actually ski from, we saw Kaylin Richardson. We had skied with her at Courcheval for some filming, so we knew her pretty well. She had a go pro, and said she was gonna go with us for our final leg of the race. We had to pop on our skis, and then skate on them over some pretty flat base area to get to the actual gondola. Dude. She’s an Olympic skier, and strong as shit, so of course she killed it. I was dying by this point because of all the sprinting in our ski gear, and my legs were so tired, but I had to try to skate as fast as I could to get to the gondola. The guys were way ahead of me because they are so much stronger and better at skating, and so was Kaylin.

When I finally got to the gondola entrance, you had to unlick out of your skis, grab them, and then head up these ramps to get up to the gondola station area. There were quite a few people slowly walking up, and Hydle, Rhinehart and Kaylin were way ahead of me, like already at the top of the station waiting for me. I pushed my way as hard as I could to get up the ramp, and then Hydle yelled at me to get in the left lane line area, so I moved over to the left lane which was moving faster. Even without people in line, I was so tired I’m not sure I could have gotten up to that gondola much faster than I did anyway.

I finally made it, and by then the guys had already loaded their skis up and there wasn’t anymore room to put them on the outside of the gondola, and they were yelling at me to just dive into the gondola holding my skis (lots of the other gondolas on the mountain allow you to bring your skis inside the cabin with you, so I didn’t think much of it).

Well the gondola liftie guys were NOT happy about me trying to do this, and started reprimanding me in French and making me get back out (all of this is happening while the gondola is about to take off because they never actually stop). So I jumped back out with my skis while the rest of the group (including Bill and Charlie again) were all sitting in the gondola together. I tried to get on the next gondola, but by then the spots to put your skis was full in that one too, so I found space in the third gondola after the guys, and jumped in.

I had a few minutes to catch my breath on the ride up, and wasn’t sure if anyone would be waiting for me at the top, but fortunately everyone was waiting shouting at me to grab my skis and hurry, because we had to get on one more lift.

I made this transition ok, and we all somehow got onto the 6 pack lift with another Epic Racer who I’m not actually sure what his name was.

At the top of that lift was our home stretch. The clue said “Come ask me a question atop _ _ U _ _ _ _ _” – the guys knew that was the Tougnette lift because it was the only lift with a U as the third letter, and I told them I knew it would be an info station because I had seen those throughout the mountain near ski patrol offices. At the top, we saw the info station, and had to actually skate or run uphill to get to it. Hydle skated all the way up quickly, and Rhinehart told me to unclick out of my bindings and run up with him. We got to the top with Bill, Charlie, Hydle, Rhinehart, me, and Kaylin (and the other guy I didn’t know, who was actually only on his first clue of the day). We all snapped our photos really quickly, and all had our submission pages pre-loaded with our video and other photo, so all we needed was to pop in our last photo.

I popped in my last photo super quick, and pushed submit for my final submission and my stupid webpage refreshed and started back at blank (I knew it was possible that this would happen because we had tested it before, but it sucked that this happened to me right when I was submitting). So I had to preload my content again – which I did do really quickly – and then submit again. I know I had my initial page submitted just as fast and Rhinehart and Hydle, but because I had to pre-load again, it slowed me down, and then my submission actually got hung up for maybe 30 seconds for my final submission to clear through. By that point, three more people – Bill, Charlie, and a guy we didn’t know named Steve – had jumped in line ahead of me on the leaderboard. This really was only the equivalent of two submissions though because Bill and Charlie got to submit as one person because Charlie was a minor. It was ok thought because I would have wanted Bill and Charlie to have a shot at winning before me, they were so cool and were our alliance on the final day, and it would be super cool especially for Charlie to get an epic pass for life being only 13!

So that’s how we completed our final day. We knew immediately that we were not in the unofficial top 10, because our leaderboard showed us coming in around 28, 29, and 33 I think. We still high fived and cheered a little bit at the top just to have it done, and Kaylin got a few final shots of us on the go pro up there.

Now, for the leaderboard. Vail was very clear in their instructions that for the final day, you HAD to have your photos and videos include the Epic Race stickers. The leaderboard changed throughout the day because if you submitted the incorrect content (ie: no sticker in your photo) you could email Vail and have them take you off the board and resubmit the correct content. The leaderboard changed throughout the day because I think people realized they had posted the wrong content, so we kept moving up. By the end of the day, we had moved up to 20 (Rhinehart), 21 (Hydle) and 25 (me). Now, the sticker rule alone should still disqualify 4 people as it stands just in the top 10. Then, from going through everyone from 1-19, for final day content alone, the guys have determined they think it is possible/likely they may move up to 10 and 11th place. Now, one more variable. The first 4 guys on the leaderboard all hiked up to the top of the mountain and found the snowman with the sticker up there before operating hours of the resort. Vail was pretty clear about this not being allowed either pretty early into the race since they wanted all content to be recorded and submitted during resort operating hours. It is also unclear if Vail would have approved the guys hiking up to begin the race at the top of the mountain since we also heard that another guy had emailed Vail prior to the final day asking for permission to hike to the top to start the final race day and they told him no. This is hearsay, and there are a lot of variables left on Vail needing to go through everyone on the leaderboard’s content, but bottom line is it is still possible that Rhinehart, and potentially Hydle, and even super small chance of potentially I could end up in the top 10 depending on how stringently Vail follows their contest guidelines. They told us they will need at least 3 business days to validate all of the content for everyone on the leaderboard, and that the final winners will not be officially announced until after that, so we will see.

All that said, I would also like to state that I am the 2nd girl on the leaderboard right now. The only other girl in front of me actually did not post a video for her final day. I’m not sure what happened there, but that should likely disqualify her, and it also may imply that she did not in fact fully complete the final race day requirements prior to me. So, it’s possible that I am the first girl finisher of the Epic Race. As hard as it was for me, I guess I should be proud of myself for being capable enough to be potentially the first girl finisher of the race, as well as being on such a champion team that allowed me to hang with them on the final day. I was really nervous that I would cause the guys to lose because of being slow, and I even told them prior that I wanted them to leave me so they could go ahead and finish. But they both rocked and said no way that they were leaving me, and that they didn’t’ even want to win unless all three of us could win. So, thank you Hydle and Rhinehart for sticking with me!

It is a bummer that the final day actually came down to physical capabilities for RUNNING. This was supposed to be a ski race, and unfortunately it came down to being a fast runner more or less (hence no girls being in the top 10). If I was a better runner, it’s possible that all three of us would be easily in the top ten. And, if we knew to hit up the library in Les Allues, I also think we would definitely be in the top ten.

BUT, all of that said, we had so much fun. I wouldn’t change anything about the entire trip, including how we conquered the last day. The friends we have met were so much fun, and hopefully will be long lasting connections for all of us. There are some things that could have been better about the way it ended and was handled, but all in all, I don’t think too many people on the trip have anything but fun memories to bring home.

Thank you to Hydle and Rhinehart for being literally the best teammates anyone could ask for. Our team became pretty famous among the Epic Race by the end of the trip, and everyone knew who Hydle was!

The rest of the day we spent actually trying to figure out the other clues (Hydle was set on wanting to know if he could have figured them all out, and obviously he did because he is so damn smart!). And then we went back to Brides, changed our clothes, and drove the car back up.

We finished off the day by riding the gondola up to the party at La Folie Deuce. Dang. That was a party! It was a pretty sweet venue for après ski if you’re ready to club. They had loud club music with a live band actually playing along with the music which was super sweet. Everyone from the Epic Race was there, and we all got to hang out and mingle. One couple from the race got engaged at the party, and then the Vail team handed out some prizes at the end.

We had to ride the gondola back down at the end of the party around 4:30, and we got to do our final gondola ride of the Epic Race with Hydle, Rhinehart, Adam and me. Adam was one of our most favorite friends on the trip and I couldn’t’ think of a better crew to have our final gondola ride down for the Epic Race. Love you Adam!

We finished off the night at Jack’s in Mirebel with some dinner, and some of our favorite friends from the trip – Jay, his son Zac, Carol, Sarah, Adam, Rhinehart, Wendy, Nick and and Scott (top ten finishers).

What a crazy final day, we did it! And, at least we all have guaranteed epic passes for next year, thanks Vail! And thank you to all of our family and friends at home that followed along and supported us. Based on this final day we realized more people were following along than we realized, so thank you to all, we love you!



Epic Race Mountain 25 – Meribel, Les Tres Vallees, France


Yesterday we did our final mountain of the race before the final scavenger hunt day today for Brides Les Baines, Les Allues and Meribel. It was a pas a pretty uneventuful day since I think everyone was wanting to prep and feel good for today. It was snowing, which was the first time we’ve had snow since arriving in Europe! But the visibility was pretty bad, so we all took it really easy, nobody wanted to get hurt before the final day!

We ran into a bunch of epic racers and took some pics in front of the final stop at Meribel, Mont Vallon, where the lift was still closed. And the rest of the day we just spent cruising all around Meribel, getting familiar with the mountain.

Once we were done with the mountain, we packed up our room and headed down to our new room in Brides Les Baines. We saw a few fellow epic racers in town, chatted with all of them for a bit, and then grabbed dinner at one of only two restaurants in town that were open. We saw some more epic racers at dinner, and everyone wanted to talk about what would happen today. Rhinehart finished his final edit of the trip at dinner, and then we all went back to the room and called it a night early.

Now we are at the calm before the storm in our rooms. As much as we’ve tried to prepare and strategize, we also all just have no idea what is going to happen today. Some predictions are that we will have to do a lot of running through towns and between lifts. I’m nervous because the guys are WAY faster than I am at both skating on skis, and running. I’m gonna be the weakest link physically for sure! I feel fine about keeping up with them on skis, but the stuff in town is gonna be really tough for me!

I also hope that however this final day happens, it doesn’t leave a sour taste in everyone’s mouth. We’ve had so much fun so far, that would suck for it to end poorly for us/everyone else and leave with that being our primary memory!

We have met so many super cool people, people that totally deserve to win, people who have sacrificed a lot to be here. People who brought their kids to literally give them an experience of a lifetime (hopefully the kids appreciate it, I think they will!) I definitely think we will leave here with some friends we will stay in touch with.

We’re excited and nervous and ready to rock this morning. It all begins at 9 am local time, and who knows what will happen after that!


Epic Race Mountains 23 & 24 – Courcheval & La Tania, Les Tres Vallees, France


So last night we ended up going out to dinner across the street from our hotel at a restaurant/bar that ended up having a lot of epic racers, and young Brits at it.

We had a decent dinner and then headed upstairs to the bar where a pretty sweet live band was playing. Every epic racer in the bar knew who Hydle was, and came up to him to tell him how much they loved him and his videos.

Adam showed up, and we eventually ended up taking a shot ski with a group of epic racers, oh boy, I was feeling that this morning!

We called it a night at about 12:30 since we actually had a lot of skiing to do the next day whereas a lot of the other epic racers are finished with their 25 resorts, just waiting on the 26 on Friday.

This morning we all were running a bit slow and we ended up getting out of the room around 10:30 (after Rhinehart made some epic eggs mixed with our leftover chicken and rice dinner) Hydle claimed it was the best breakfast yet in Europe!

We headed straight up to the top of Courcheval, took some pics and videos, and then bombed down in some nice soft smooth sunny groomer snow.

When we got to the village, we met straight up with Eric (Vail videographer for the race) and Kaylin Richardson, two time Olympian skier!

They had asked the guys earlier if they could meet up to get some footage of all of us skiing, so it was nice that we found them that easily.

We got our stamps, played around in the village and then headed back up to the top to get some lunch and then some skiing!

We had lunch at the top of Courcheval, where we sat in a a sweet circular couch set that looked like bottle service. And then we headed off to get back to some skiing!

Dude. Kaylin is riiiiiiidiculously amazing at skiing! I’m pretty sure every guy on the mountain had a crush on her. Shit. I have a crush on her! I thought I knew what good “girl skiing” looked like. Haha. Nope. She just raised that about 10 levels above what I thought I knew. She was so friendly and so cool and normal I guess if I can use that word. In other words, she felt like she was just a super fun friend to ski with (who happened to rip the shit out of skiing).

We had a lot of fun playing around in the soft sunshine snow, and we did some shots of us skiing powder 8s as a group, although Kaylin was such a good skier she kinda made everyone looked bad (in a fun good way!)

We called it a day with Eric and Kaylin because we needed to head over to La Tania to finish up our checklist over there. I’ve got to say, it was pretty damn fun getting to ski with a super fun, cool, and rad Olympic skier for a few hours! Hell ya Kaylin!

As soon as we dropped in over to La Tania it got super shady and cold and kinda icy :/ Maybe that place rocks in the morning if they have sunshine but by the afternoon it was all in the shade and not much was going on. So we made our visit quick and headed back up to get our final shot of the day at the top of Les Dous Lanches, which is at one of he highest peaks overlooking everything at the resort. Hydle is still concerned with me being fast because my normal leisurely pace is pretty slow, so as we were getting off a gondola he said “ok we need to practice our speed, everyone needs to race off this gondola to the next lift.” So we all charged it and made it to the next lift at the same time and rode it up. So freaking pretty up there!

We were pushing time at this point because we had to make it back to Meribel, so we cruised back to another lift, and then the huge tram, and then dropped back down into the Meribel village.

We ran into more epic racers at the top of the final run into the village, and we all cruise down the final run which was pretty icy, back to our place.

Once we got back, we all decided to check out Brides Les Baines and Les Allues because we hadn’t seen them yet, so we headed out just to explore.

We ended up having dinner at the cutest little French place run by an adorable husband and wife team, with a lot of woodwork inside the small restaurant, and a cute little bar and fireplace. We all had steak and hamburgers which has been hard to come by so far, considering most meals have primarily consisted of ham and sausage for some reason out here! We were stoked on the food, the service and the ambiance at this little place in Les Allues called L’Arbe. Loved it!

Now we are just gonna call it a night as we’ve got a big next two days ahead of us in the home stretch of the race!


Rhinehart’s Video – La Tania
Hydle’s Video – La Tania
Cooley’s Video – Courcheval
Cooley’s Video – La Tania

Epic Race Mountains 21 & 22 – Saint Martin de Belleville & Les Menuires, Les Tres Vallees, France


This morning Hydle and I actually woke up before Rhinehart because he ended up going out a little bit last night and we stayed in to catch up on some sleep. Last night, I ended up knocking my (empty) wine glass off the armrest of the couch and broke the glass. This morning, while shuffling around dealing with breakfast stuff, Rhinehart broke a glass. Then, Hydle and I were ready slightly before Rhinehart, and we were giving him crap because partially why he was ready after us was because he was cleaning up his broken glass.

So, then, Rhinehart finished up getting ready ready first and walked out the door just to prove he actually was ready before us, and Hydle was like “fine, then this is why I’m late too!” and he threw his glass off to the side and it bounced onto the patio (the door happened to be open) and broke on the patio. Haha, of course when he breaks a glass on purpose, it breaks outside, so convenient!

After that we headed off to the mountain since we knew we had a long day ahead of us checking off St Martin de Belleville and Les Menuires. Hydle has been “training” me all week, giving me lessons and drills on how to get in and out of my skis the quickest, skate fast between lifts, pop my bindings off and grab my skis and run fast, etc. So, I initially had trouble pulling my skis apart because the brakes were criss crossed, and when I finally made it to the first gondola line of the morning, Hydle was there tapping his wrist to let me know I wasn’t fast enough. Everything is a test, and he’s like a drill sergeant in training for this final race day on Friday!

We first skied straight over to St Martin de Belleville where there was a sign at the top of the run that led into the village that warned us that it may be poor coverage and dangerous and to be safe. Haha. It turned out to be one of the most fun, sunshine lit, smooth, soft groomers we’ve skied yet, with full coverage!

We lapped that twice, got our stamps done in the village, and then headed back up to then make it over to Les Menuires, which was a ways away also. Of course we ran into Adam like we always do en route to Les Menuires, so he grouped up with us for a bit too.

It took us a few runs/lifts/gondolas to get up to the top of Les Menuires, La Masse 2 lift, and we ran into Trevor, Colin and Ryan, other epic racers we hung out with at the top of Verbier! We chatted with them, and then next up, we ran into Jeff and Jannah Din who we had lunch with yesterday! Jannah’s knee was hurting her, so she said she was going to take the gondola down, and the rest of us skied down a pretty fun run, into a sunshine filled deck at a restaurant that had “La Masse” in the name I think.

Adam branched off, and we had a nice lunch on the deck with Jannah and Jeff. The sun went down on the deck at the lunch spot right around 2, so we decided to head off and go get our stamps done at Les Menuires.

We rode the funnest lift yet on the way to Les Menuires. It was a 5 pack people mover that basically crossed you over the road into the Les Menuires village. Since there were 5 of us, we each grabbed one of the people movers, and had some fun taking pics and videos on the ride over with one of us per people mover all lined up in a train formation.

From there, we got our stamps, and then started to make our way back to Meribel, since you have to start kinda early to make it back to your home base village when you’re on a mountain this huge.

On our way back, we got distracted by a super sunny deck that had tons of lounge chairs facing the sun. We grabbed a round of beers there, took more fun panoramas, and kept saying we felt like we were at the beach, except we were epic racing!

Jannah’s knee was hurting pretty bad by this point (she is recovering from knee surgery, and kinda re-injured it yesterday she said). So, we cruised nice and slow back towared Meribel.

On literally the last run of the day. The home stretch run. The crew was skiing pretty slow actually because we were making sure Jannah was going to make it down ok, as she was taking her time with her hurt knee.

I have NO idea how this happened, but I was cruising last in line of the 5 of us, Jeff was 4th, and we were all going at a moderate speed for our normal pace, and Jeff somehow caught an edge and launched himself forward up and over his skis. I really have no idea how he crashed this hard, he’s an experienced skier, and there was no bumps in the snow that would have really explained how he crashed, but somehow he went sailing forward over his skis, and his shoulder and head hit first, and then he somersaulted over and one of his skis popped off. It was so gnarly. I haven’t seen a crash like that in a long time. Ugh.

I stopped and asked him if he was ok as I was picking up one of his poles. At first he seemed alright, but I told him “Dude chill out for a second, that was a super gnarly crash, don’t try to get up yet.” So he sat there for a bit, and I kept asking him questions like “did you hit your head? What hurts? How do you feel?” and he got a little bit more out of it with each question and I said “you look really sick, you’re out of it, I’m going to get someone to get ski patrol for you.” At first he was insisting he was fine and that his shoulder just hurt a little bit, but I kept saying there was no way I was letting him stand up yet because it was clear he was pretty out of it. As I was telling him he should just relax and lay down because we were gonna get ski patrol, his eyes kinda rolled back and he laid down and fainted/passed out, but with his eyes open.

This freaked me out because I was worried that he was passing out because of a head injury. But when he came to about 30 second later, he was actually a lot more coherent than before. I still insisted we were getting ski patrol because I was still worried that he passed out because of hitting his head. But then he started answering all of my questions normally, and he said that he has a history of fainting any time he has an injury, or even when he gets his blood pressure taken! When he said “Cooley, I know I can ski back down, I’m ok” I started to realize he was probably ok, but he did say his shoulder was still hurting. So I asked him if I could see his shoulder, and unzipped his jacket and felt it and he had a big bump/bone lodged up from his shoulder.

The ski patrol finally came, but Jeff was pretty insistent on not wanting to get loaded up in the toboggan because he knew he could ski it down, and then when the ski patrol told us if he took the ride down, it would be considered a rescue and it would require insurance paperwork, etc, I realized it probably would be ok for him to ski down.

So, we took it nice and easy, and skied down, and finally made it to where the rest of our group was waiting for us (this was probably at least 25 minutes after his crash, so they had been waiting a while!).

Jeff ended up going to the doctor, and this evening Jannah sent us a Facebook message with a picture of his xray that showed his collarbone was broken. ☹ Poor guy. They are so cool, I’m super bummed that he broke his collarbone, and Jannah reinjured her knee. Ugh. But at least we made some new friends, they are awesome, stoked we met up and got to spend the day with them, hopefully we will get to still hang some more too!

Now we came back to the room, and Hydle and I decided to try to go to the mini grocery store/market across the street to try to find some options for dinner. Well, Rhinehart is gluten free/celiac, so he definitely can not mess with having any gluten. This is difficult because none of us know French, which all of the food labels are in, and the grocery store didn’t’ have a lot of options. So after striking out on every idea we had for dinner (and being pretty tired of eating meat and cheese only) we decided to forget it and that we would go out to dinner.

So we are about to head out for our first night out in Meribel, hopefully it rocks!! Feel better Jeff!

Hydle’s Video – Saint Martin de Belleville

Rhinehart’s Video – Les Menuires
Hydle’s Video – Les Menuires
Cooley’s Video – Saint Martin de Belleville
Cooley’s Video – Les Menuires

Epic Race Mountains 19 & 20 – Orelle & Val Thorens – Les Tres Vallees, France


Well, Hydle slept in his clothes last night. I guess even rockstars hit a wall sometimes! Rhinehart got everyone up at 8 am, and was antsy to get going, since we knew this was going to be a big day covering lots of terrain to check off our two mountains, Orelle and Val Thorens for the day (about a 1.5 – 2 hour commute from Meribel via lifts. But hey, if you’re gonna be commuting, on skis on a lift isn’t a bad way to go!). We got organized, I ran across the street and bought a few groceries for breakfast while the guys looked at the maps, and then we got on the road toward the gondola area in Meribel.

We jumped on our first gondola of the day (one of maybe 8 gondola/trams that we rode. Most resorts in the US have one or two token gondolas. Les Tres Vallees seems to have like 20, but don’t quote me on that).

Not much eventful happened other than the unstoppable breathtaking views of the Alps nonstop from every peak we reached, but we had a big commute of “lift/run/gondola/run/gondola/transfer to another gondola/” etc, so we were just skiing to lift after lift to get our mountains checked off for the day.

About an hour and a half into the skiing/lift riding, we made it to the base of Orelle, where you actually have to ride a gondola DOWN into the valley town of Orelle. I think in good conditions you can ski into the valley floor, but the coverage isn’t great there so far, so we had to download the gondola which was a pretty long ride, maybe 15 minutes, into the town of Orelle to get our stamps at the tourist office.

We ran into a brother sister team of epic racers there, as well as another team of a Grandpa/Son/Granddaughter (who is 9 years old and epic racing!!! Dang. I think I got to ski for the first time when I was like 12, can you imagine getting to ski 26 resorts through the US and Europe with your Dad and Grandpa when you’re 9? Lucky!!)

We rode the gondola back up with the brother sister team, Jannah and Jeff, and of course ran into Adam Warot there again because we run into him everywhere!

We decided to get lunch at the restaurant at the top of Orelle, and went through a lunch line where we had to order food from the lady at the end. The menu was entirely in French, and when we asked the lady that we ordered from if she spoke English, she quickly said “no”. I’m not sure if she didn’t speak English, or if she didn’t feel like trying, but the next lady that was serving the food could speak English so I’m not sure why she couldn’t have offered to ask the lady next to her to help us out (although I have heard the French are not friendly with speaking English so it was expected I guess.)

We ordered Spaghetti because it was the only thing on the menu we could understand (and Rhinehart ordered meat and potatos because he is gluten free, and basically all he has been eating here in Europe has been meat, cheese, potatos and wine, poor guy).

We had a nice lunch on a sunny deck overlooking the Alps and the Orelle Valley, and then branched off again to start making our way back to Val Thorens and eventually Meribel.

In Val Thorens we didn’t do much other than ride a sweet magic carpet tunnel up into the town and go to the information office. The town of Val Thorens is pretty sweet, the ski runs kinda run through town, and there is a whole scene going off, après ski, snow parks, people cruising around, nice hotels, etc. It definitely seemed like the cool spot to stay if you’re into après ski/being right in the scene. Obviously a couple clubs were thrown into the mix too because that’s how they after party in Europe!

We met up with a couple more epic racers, Nick and Sean, and headed back toward Meribel since it was getting late. We ripped it up on the runs back home which was fun, and the guys went through a park again.

Once we made it back to town, we ran into more epic racers, Jay and Wendy, chatted with them for a while, and then grabbed our skis and hiked back toward our hotel. Right when we got back to the hotel, Hydle decided he wanted to explore the town a bit more to prepare for the race. But first, he wanted to teach me how to carry my skis better. I brought my big powder skis, the VJJ’s with me, so they are big and heavy and wide and tough for me to carry/handle especially considering I didn’t grow up skiing and don’t have great skills in ski management.

So Hydle decided to run some drills for me, teaching me how to hold my skis over my shoulder, how to switch shoulders with one hand, etc. This was fine, but then he decided he wanted to explore up a staircase/escalator. It’s a good thing he did because we realized this escalator takes us straight up to the slopes which we can ski into the gondola instead of hiking, and if we figure it out tomorrow, we can ski right back to our hotel, so that’s good. But then he wanted to run drills with me. This was like 5 pm. I had been skiing and in my ski boots all day, and all I wanted to do was take them off, but he decided it was drill time for me to learn how to manage my skis, pop in and out of them quickly, learn how to turn around on the snow quickly, and learn how to pick them up and put them together and throw them over my shoulder quickly (because Friday is the real race day and every second will count then!). I’m fine with drills and actually appreciate them, but I was not in the mood, but I was trying to hang with it, but was losing my patience also.

It was pretty funny because he was testing my patience too for some reason (I knew he was testing my patience because “everything is a test” he always says!).

Finally Rhinehart decided we should head back and shut Hydle down so we got back to the room, took off our boots where Rhineharts socks smelled up the whole room (apparently he has worn the same pair every day so far in Europe!) haha. Then we walked across the street to grab some stuff for dinner, headed back and I cooked up some chicken, rice and veggies while the guys edited and worked on their computers.

Another fun day in the books, although it was a long one. Things should get a little easier (commute wise) from now on until our big day on Friday! Can’t imagine how sweet this mountain would be on a powder day. It must be insane since there is just unlimited terrain…France!

Rhinehart’s Video – Orelle

Hydle’s Video – Val Thorens
Rhinehart’s Video – Val Thorens
Cooley’s Video – Orelle
Cooley’s Video – Val Thorens

The Edge of Never


[YouTubeUlar] <— 145,415 Another movie worth finding... and watching. Thanks for the heads up Manley. I Can't believe we hadn't heard of this 2009 film starring Kye Petersen, Mike Hattrup and Glen Plake earlier. [Edge of Never Homepage]