The Mini Mission
You’ve got a crew and about 48 hours to spare before something is booked in your calendar. Can you make this trip happen...?
Written by Planks Rider Tove Kockum, following a last-minute weekend trip for a freeride comp and tour. A manual on a successful mini-mission to the Leutkirch Hütte in St. Anton, Austria.
For me, these small spontaneous missions are the best ones, as you don’t even have time to build up very high expectations.
A key factor to make these missions a fruitful voyage is to go with people that are like-minded. For us, that meant going with those who are also not stressed if the trip isn’t very organised, or that largely the approach will be easy and ‘take it as it comes’.
A little bit of zigzagging between the trees on route to the hut
Another important factor is that everyone involved needs to be on the same page on how the trip will go, so for example; how long are we willing to walk for? How much do we want to ski?
The group dynamic when approaching risk is especially super important. Everyone needs to be comfortable to follow their guts and speak up if they have any concerns, also to listen to the rest of the group and respect each other’s opinions. This can be tricky to know when going with a newly formed crew, but my advice is to go with at least one person you know really well and the rest can be fresh friends.
At least that way you’ll know you and your buddy will be like-minded when it comes to taking risks!
Tired and happy to finally reach the hut!
No risk-taking here.
Luckily, it turned out to be a great location for a little sunset ski and a sunrise ski-tour. The 'take it as it comes' approach was already paying off!
Catching the last bit of sun.
Early bird to catch the sunrise, it looks like I’m sleep-walking, (which I basically was).
On the upcoming day, we faced some rising temperatures, which meant we had to decide where we could ski down safely. Luckily everyone shared the same safety attitude which led us to agreeing on finding a mellow but fun non-south facing face to ski down.
Surprisingly good and stable cold snow.
Finding my way down a playful field of snow.
I have heard that Danish people are supposed to be the happiest on earth, and that is because they have smaller expectations in life. As it turned out for us, having lower expectations on a mini-mission to a hut made us sensationally happy too!
To take it as it came, and playing the spontaneous game was a great success. Less over thinking and too high expectations, equals less disappointment.
Cheers to that!