Highland girls in the fairy glen
October 23, 2007 on 11:17 am | In Snowboarding |
It is the time of year when most European snowboard pros head to the European glaciers to get in some pre season training. The glacier of choice for this seasons autumn training is Saas Fee in Switzerland. Saas Fee literally means glen of the fairies in Swiss German. It is a beautiful alpine village high in the swiss alps and it is easy to see why it would be associated with otherworldy beings as it really is an enchanted place. At this time of year the trees are all turning and the white of the first snow falls me akes a stark contrast to the burnt oranges and yellows of the autumnal trees.
I headed to Saas Fee with the junior European Roxy Team as their coach for the week. There were 10 girls from the age of 13 to 16, from all over Europe, France, Switzerland, The UK, Norway and Holland. It is the first time that Roxy has ran a training camp for the junior girls and they were very, very excited to be there. This great opportunity to meet the girls they will be riding with for the rest of their careers is very special and as well as learning a lot on the mountian the girls learnt a lot about how to organze themselves, present themselves to the media and how to train to get fit and prevent injury.
I was happy to have two fellow highlanders along with me, Abigail Dempster and Ashlee Smith, both from the Spey Valley. Abigail is only 13 and Ashlee is 16 so they really have a long career ahead of them. They made the most of the camp and by the end of it were chatting away in French quite the thing to the French girls. Abi and Ashlee will be competing along with fellow UK rider, Aimee Fuller from Northern Ireland, in the UK contests this season and are looking forward to putting their new tricks to the test.
As well as the Roxy camp, there were many other National Teams training in Saas Fee in preperation for the up coming World Cup at the end of the month. I will be heading back out to the fairy valley in a weeks time to also compete in the next snowboard World Cup event. In the meantime I will get out into the Scottish highlands to see if I can see any of our own highland fairies!
Lesley McKenna
http://www.chunkyknit.com
Professional snowboarder, film maker and ambassador for Visitscotland. All sorts of outdoor sports from skiing to mountain biking and now mixes her time on the Snowboard World Cup Tour with time in Scotland doing these sports.
