Gnarlberg: A Love Story
Advance tickets for the red carpet event will be available by invitation only.
Update! Nepal Notebook Campaign
Over $2700 has been raised to aid school children in Nepal, donated by our generous friends and family. Thank you! We felt it was time to update you on the progress of our OnlyABuck Project.
As of this moment, the president of Nepal Volunteers Council Keshab Acharya, is applying for a passport in order to receive the funds for the Nepali children from our bank. Due to exorbitant fees from the local bank in Nepal, we elected to open a joint account in the USA to eliminate transaction fees and make sure the students receive what you’ve donated. Keshab has accepted hundreds of scholarship forms and will choose 20 students to receive supplies, uniforms, and a fully funded school year from you!
President Acharya at his desk in Nepal
As promised, if you donated $140 or more to support a student for the year, you will receive a letter and photo from your sponsored child when they receive their items. Thank you for your patience, as we finalize these international transactions.
If you would like to learn more about this project, please visit our Nepal Notebook Campaign site!
View original article on this subject.
Skiing the Austrian Alps and a Preview of Gnarlberg: A Love Story
After a month of bouncing around between family and friends in Philly, NYC, Michigan, LA and SF, we were off to the Austrian Alps to finally “Ski the Alps.” Long on my list of things to do, we’ve heard the rumors about Austria from friends and were curious if they were true. Are Austrians really born with skis on? Is the apres ski in Austria really the best in the world? And finally, do the mountains really make everything in North America seem tiny? There was only one way to find out and to do just that we flew into Zurich and took a 2.5 hour train ride east to a well-known village, St. Anton.
Erin and I Viewing the Valley Below
The valley is cut deep and the mountains are high, with chairs and gondolas going up each side, behind and around the mountains. Nestled two towns east of St. Anton’s ritzy, glam-and-gush center, lies little Schnann, our home for the next 9 days. Haus Schoepf, our lovely guest house is predominantly run by Fiona, the guest-house mom extraordinaire. Even with five kids, all girls, she somehow found the time to check us in and have breakfast ready to go by 7:30 sharp every morning. Built around the Stube, a traditional Austrian/Bavarian-style room for eating and relaxing, the house is rather large and the rooms cozy. And, at just a free, 15-minute bus ride away from all the slope-side fun you could possibly handle, at 1/10th the cost, this little gem was a no-brainer.
Calling this area a “resort” region is way too loose of a word. There are essentially 5 villages – Lech, Zurs, St. Anton, St. Christoph, and Stuben, each a “resort” in their own right, but this doesn’t even include all of the terrain, with Rendl across the valley being world-class, and Zug to the far-north, an untouched powder paradise six days after a dump. I can’t find the specifics online but I’d have to guess if you were to compare apples to apples, the Arlberg region is about the size of 4 Vails or 5 Squaw Valleys. It’s massive, simply put.
Since it snowed so much here this year already, the Arlberg (Gnarlberg!) region has one of the largest bases in the world. And, to make things even better, we arrived just before a massive storm that didn’t stop dumping snow on us for the next 6 days, creating what we’ve dubbed “eight for eight.” Powder days, that is, and none being less than a foot deep. “Dreams really do come true,” we constantly yelled, hopping off another cornice into fresh, untracked powder (h/t DDF.)
“Oooooh, you might say that I’m addicted.
You might say I’m really hooked.
But at least I’m not addicted to the powder that you sniff into your nose.
That would really suck.”
- Damien Filiatrault
Dunkels, Hefeweizens, and Frites
Due to the storm(s), we spent our first few days lapping the Galzigbahn gondola in St. Anton, enjoying fresh tracks all-day, every day, and anxiously waiting for the upper mountain to come off wind-hold. Our friend Mark arrived, somehow in the eye of the storm, and we spent one day on the slopes with him, rebel yelling on each and every run. Amazed that most, if not all, other skiers remained on-piste and directly between the trail lines, we laughed hysterically that getting fresh powder tracks on every run was actually happening. Just like at home, at the end of any epic powder day we were ready for some celebratory drinks. We were eager to enjoy an apres ski, French for heavy drinking post skiing, at Mooserwirt, consistently voted the best apres ski in the world. Bellying up to the bar, we began with half-liter pints of dunkels and hefeweizens before getting heavy into the jagermeister, plum schnapps, and even worse, the hot widow (heisse witwe) aka the cougar shot due to its unabashed use of whipped cream and the ensuing mess. Beer swilling continued and the lights got low, the DJ started spinning, and before long it was an absolute fist-pumping, dancing-in-your-ski-boots kind of party, which for us, ended before 6:30. The only unfortunate thing was we had to ski down afterward and catch our bus home! Luckily, we were taught how to snow plow. 
We bid Mark farewell and enjoyed more incredible snow, finding more and more areas to get the good stuff. Damien arrived the following night, eager to hit the slopes and enjoy what we’d been enjoying. We hit Rendl and got 3-feet deep, face-shots-on-every-turn kind of snow. We hit Kappal, and went Mach-18 down a snow-filled valley for 10 minutes straight, all untouched. We traversed around a 10,000 foot peak for a field of snow, just waiting for us to dive in. We jumped off cliffs, over cornice lips, into couloirs and down chutes. Avalanche danger being of concern, we took all necessary precautions and as the week carried on, and the danger became less, we just kept getting more. And more. It was an endless bowl of snow, with free refills and we ate it all up. On the final day, we split up accidentally, and Erin and I found what may have been the last untouched mecca of snow on the backside of Zurs. After fifteen minutes of pure enjoyment, at the bottom of the slope, we looked back at our tracks and the two helicopters swooping between the peaks, smiled at each other, knowing that we had just poached heli-skiing terrain.
D, Schneids and I Waiting for Ski Bus in Schnann
Together, we bid farewell to Fiona and Haus Schoepf and caught the train to Zurich for a night of fondue and resting up before our early flight. It was the trip of a lifetime and getting such enormous amounts of snow was certainly the icing on top. Plus, with lift tickets and rentals for the week costing $45/day and our room at $30/day, we felt like we had gotten one heck of a deal compared to the $95/day lift-tickets-alone prices in N. America.
See more on how to “go budge” and get the sweetest deals by visiting Erin’s article at SF Examiner.
And finally, a preview of Gnarlberg: A Love Story
New Zealand: Why We’ll Always Return
As travelers, we’ve begun to rate our backpacking experience in each country by answering the question, “Do we want to come back?”
To answer this question, we seem to use an algorithm involving access of sites, balance of nature and culture, attitude of locals and cost
of travel.
This was our second trip to New Zealand, which speaks loudly for a country that is just the size of Colorado. Even after a month of packing in all of the adventures we could, we ultimately stated, “We will STILL return.” If you plan to visit NZ, you may find some useful tips among our experiences. Here’s what we did differently the second time around, what we loved, and why we’ll always return to New Zealand.
Following Bourdain’s Footsteps: Melbourne, Australia
We always said if we ever found a city with Philadelphia’s layout and San Francisco’s weather, we’d move there in a heartbeat. Little did we know that’d require moving to the opposite side of the world to Australia’s hippest city, Melbourne.
We arrived in-style, fresh from Sydney after a perfectly executed 2-hour nap, starting before we took off and ending upon landing. We checked into our hostel within the CBD, Central Business District, a perfect rectangular shaped grid, eight blocks wide by four high. Trams run in just about every direction but walking is easy enough unless you’re trying to get a bit out of “town” to visit some of the cool suburbs like Fitzroy and Collingwood for art, music and beer or South Yarra for high-end fashion and what would become our favorite restaurant. We knew before arriving this was our kind of town as one of the few things on television worth watching, Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations, had just done a special on Melbourne, and it had our mouths watering. Whenever you build a city with immigrants from all over the world, you’re sure to find the Peanut Butter Nomads, fork, knife, spoon, chopstick, or freehand, ready to dig in. Flush with some extra cash after a stellar month at my company, we proposed to spend a little extra and put ‘ol Bourdain to the true test. We were going to follow in his footsteps, within reason of course, as it was unlikely we’d be getting tasting menus at the city’s most lauded kitchens, and see if the author was just full of fluff or really did make good suggestions and recommendations on his show. Read the rest of this entry
How To Sail Around the World and Live to Tell About It
Coast Guard Couple, Greg and Tiffany Norte
We met Greg and Tiffany Norte while on a liveaboard scuba diving boat in the Great Barrier Reef. Between the 10 dives, overeating the surprisingly good buffet food, reminiscing about the greatest the USA has to offer, and getting my butt kicked at euchre (a rare occasion, just ask the Schneider’s!) so badly I had to jump off the boat naked, we delved deep into the “Coast Guard Couples” interesting lifestyle choice – as the title suggests – sailing around the world and sharing the skinny on how to do it yourself. Heck, they’ve been doing it for two years straight and have 16 years of sailing experience between them! So when it comes from them, you know you’re getting expert advice. Fortunately, you don’t need to fly to Australia to meet them and pick their brain. They’re giving out the deets here for free and have an absolutely infinite amount of quality how-to’s on their website, along with other great antidotes from the rarely seen South Pacific, at www.CoastGuardCouple.com. So slip off your flip flops, crack into a Pacifico, and climb on board while Greg and Tiffany show us how to travel the world for free. Oh, that sounds so nice, I need to write it again. FOR FREE. Read the rest of this entry
Going Batty in Australia
Missing Halloween in The USA was a glum moment for us. No one does costumes, candy and haunted houses the way we do in America, so we decided to get our fix by getting chummy with a Halloween icon that we could find: the bat.
Although tradition shows bats flying around horror scenes and sucking blood from humans, they are actually very helpful, non-obtrusive creatures.
Melbourne's Botanical Gardens
The Micro Bats living in Melbourne, Australia’s Botanical Gardens are being studied by a group of scientists to determine what effect urbanization has on this species. By capturing the nocturnal critters, the scientists also hope to find answers to many unknown aspects of their life and assist in medical breakthroughs for humans. For example, bats may hold clues for skin grafting, since the wings repair very quickly when ripped even though they have no source of blood to this paper-thin membrane. Read the rest of this entry
Scuba Diving the Great Barrier Reef and Driving Down the Coast
The Great Barrier Reef
Dreams, every so often, do come true. I had been dreaming of diving the Great Barrier Reef for over 10 years and was close to fulfilling it in 2008, if it weren’t for “the end of a 7-year drought,” insane storms flooding highways and essentially shutting down the coast. The weather wasn’t much better this time but as we soon learned on the boat, “if it’s raining, the best place to be is underwater.”
We boarded the Kangaroo Express through the Cairns Dive Center, bidding farewell to our ladies for the night and promising to behave. We’d see them the following day after all and Claire needed to finish up some pool work before getting into the open water. The ride out was nothing short of terrifying, not so much for our lives, but for the sheer embarrassment of potentially being “that guy” who was hurling over the side of the boat. Eyes trained solely for the horizon, we mustered up the strength to keep our breakfast down and finally, the 90-minute ride ended with us boarding the much more stable Kangaroo Express, our home for the next 3 days.
After some safety briefings and getting checked into our rooms, and trying to sneak our way into the 11:00 dive, we learned we’d be spending our time between two dive areas: Mantaray Caye and East Timor on Moore Reef. Our first dive finally arrived and was essentially a refresher course and ultimately a way for divemaster Joel to gauge our skill
Giant Clam
level. I guess he felt comfortable, because the 2nd dive was true freedom. On the first dive we saw a giant clam that was breathtaking and would be a regular sighting through the rest of our time. After the second briefing, we were allowed to go out on our own, exploring the massive reef system and bommies, scouting three turtles, anemones and tons of tropical fish. At first, it was scary being on our own but soon found our comfort zone and enjoyed each minute underwater. This would be our final dive of the day and we settled nicely into the buffet dinner, matched with goon we snuck on board, and got busy playing cribbage. We met a group of Americans and soon found out they knew how to play Euchre, and the next 2 days were spent perfecting our skills between dives.
The next day was busy, with 4 total dives. We started early and got on the 6:00am dive and then the 8:00 dive with a delicious breakfast in between. We probably even snuck in a game of cribbage, too. The highlight was the Read the rest of this entry
Nepal to Australia: It’s Time For Friends
Leaving Nepal was not an easy thing to do. After all, we had volunteered with the Nepal Volunteers Council, Trekked the Annapurna Circuit, Kayaked Lake Phewa and caught up on lost time in Pokhara, Launched the OnlyABuck: Notebooks for Nepal Campaign, stretched, meditated and cleansed at Sadhana Yoga Ashram, and Cared for Elephants in Chitwan. Considering our dream list going in, we had more than accomplished our goals but knew deep down we would be returning. OnlyaBuck™: Free Health Clinic, anyone? (It’s OnlyaBuck™ now by the way…long story.)
Hong Kong Sickboy
Our intention was to fly from Kathmandu to Hong Kong and spend a few days with my old friend from high school (and Penn State), Chi Tsang. Arriving in Hong Kong, we were both ill and completely wiped from, well, travel we guess. We just needed rest and weren’t in top form. We emailed Chi and broke the bad news, switched our flight to Sydney (for free, thanks OneWorld!) and after 40 hours of travel, landed in Australia’s beautiful city that we had left behind in 2008. This time, however, we had some friends from San Francisco waiting, Chris Piro and Claire Fabricante, and were hell bent on arriving early, and giving them a surprise. Yes, I am my father’s son.
Checking into our hostel, we knocked on Chris and Claire’s door and as expected, they were out and about exploring. This gave us the perfect opportunity to dive head first into our pillows, get caught up on some
Sydney Food Fest Under Jack O'Randa Trees
quality sleep and try to shake the bug. Nine hours later, we felt great, left a note for Chris and Claire to meet us at the Sydney Food Festival in nearby Hyde Park and most importantly, to bring wine.
The food festival was hopping, and would ultimately begin our foray into the food scene of Australia. From $2 salmon and avocado sushi rolls to $20 all you can eat seafood smorgasbords, we arrived with one mission in Australia: eat what we missed most and eat well. And boy, we were hungry! We opted for steamed duck and BBQ pork buns and roasted chicken and sage pot stickers. Laughing at ourselves for selecting Asian as our first meal after having just left Asia, we sprawled out, enjoyed the meal and cracked into some goon, Oceania’s word for bagged wine. The food was delicious, albeit overpriced, but we’ve become experts in finding value on any menu worldwide. And we realized, just like the USA, Asian food IS part of the Australian food culture. Unless you’re from Europe, Asia, or Africa, we are all just immigrants after all, right?
Caring for Elephants
Chitwan National Park is one of Nepal’s treasures. We had heard about the jungle walks, native dance shows and elephant rides from the moment we entered the country. After our Annapurna hike and yoga ashram, it was our turn to see this jungle reserve for ourselves.
All three of us bathed in the river.
The day before we boarded our bus from the lakeside town of Pokhara, we had dinner with a couple from Bath, England who told us of their recent encounters in Chitwan. Walking on a narrow dirt path through tall, jungle grasses, their four-person group was surprised by a sloth bear. This animal, known for its long claws, was just as shocked by the tourists, who were hidden by the greenery, and lashed out at the guide with a growl. The entire group turned and sprinted as quickly as possible, but then realized that the guide was not with them. They heard his screams for help and returned to find his leg badly gashed, so the English couple wrapped him in their shirts and lifted him out of the jungle track and into a vehicle, rushing him to the hospital. After skin grafting and a few surgeries, the guide will be back to work in three months. On our arrival we heard the story from this guide’s brother, confirming the tale. This whole episode was followed by other crazy stories and we learned that the guides in Chitwan earn “bragging rights” when they survive wild beasts, and love to mention that they “saved tourists from the animals!” Read the rest of this entry
