Fresh powder in les Alpes

Friday 22nd March brought more excitement than the usual end-of-term celebrations for 48 of Imperial’s snow enthusiasts: we were heading to the French Alps for our Easter ski trip. BUSC Main Event, organised annually by the British University Snowsports Council, is a week full of competitions, après events and drunken antics attended by 1,500 students from the UK, and this year ¬– hosted in Alpe D’Huez – promised to be as crazy as ever.

The long coach journey passed surprisingly quickly with the combined effect of alcohol, high spirits and sleep deprivation/induction, and soon we were in the resort, stocking up on pasta and cheap booze for the week ahead. Craving release from the confines of reclining seats, we unleashed our wild sides with our first fancy dress theme: animals. From the conventional slightly slutty leopard print to a penguin complete with a startlingly realistic blacked-up face, we gathered around our watering hole to enjoy games of Arrogance and 20+1 (and less conventional variations). In what would prove to be a theme for the week, we were chased from our room with noise complaints from angry French residents/ BUSC reps, and fled into the night to seek the relative safety of the town’s bars.

Despite night-time disturbances from the furious and incoherent penguin, most of the group was up fresh-faced and buzzing for first lifts on our first day tearing up the slopes. The Gods of Pow had looked favourably on us: fresh powder at Easter is a rare treat, and what powder it was! Our skis and boards were barely tainted with slush or ice all week, and the snow at the top of the mountain was as perfect as the view. We toasted the first day’s success at the Après-bar, where we could be found most evenings enjoying vin chaud – a pursuit even more enjoyable in the sunshine of the following days.

Evenings merged into nights with more drinking, drinking games and fancy dress. There were some truly inspired costume ideas for Wednesday night’s bad taste theme at the midweek party, where a rogue priest and his disciples spent much of the evening drumming up support for their society. We also dominated the bar on the last night with displays of nudity that most Metric-goers could only dream of. Night-time entertainment never finished when the bars did, though. Expeditions to the only kebab shop in town open at 3am were numerous, while back at the hotel attempts to dampen spirits by reps and weary roommates alike were met with serious resistance. Alcohol and adrenaline can often bring out the best in people, though not in the case of one half of the notorious John duo, whose keenness to get the first lift one morning began with putting his ski boots on at 4am.

As well as busting Imperial’s reputation for being boring by winning the prize for most noise complaints, we put up an impressive show for the serious competition side of the week too, with competitors representing the club in many ski and all snowboard disciplines. Resident Irish badass John even managed to nail the freestyle event with fresh stitches in his shin! Thanks to some spectacularly gnarly tricks from the current (John) and future (Mikkel) Presidents, Imperial had two top-10 finishes in the Shred and Butter competition, and top-20 finishes in the Slopestlye. We also stole the show at the Red Bull 1976 Winter Olympics Games revival, where dark horse Will performed a back-flip on blades, securing the team 3rd place for ‘initiative’. The national-level standard meant that competition was incredibly fierce, and though we didn’t place in the racing this year, we had a strong turnout and hope to build on the progress that race captain Michael has been tirelessly working for at next year’s event.

As the rest of the week raced by, acquaintances became friends; tomato pasta was usurped by meat/cheese fondue; snowploughing skis became parallel; library-induced pale faces were replaced by peeling goggle tans/burns; and ridiculous quotes became in-jokes (cue ‘I’m so horned out like’). Before we knew it, we were scrubbing away the last beer stains from our rooms and reluctantly dragging our sweat and snow-drenched luggage back to the bus. The journey home was a subdued affair, though fortunately certain emotional group members managed to hold back previously shed tears for the sad inevitability of leaving the mountains. We will be back next year, les Alpes: absence only makes the heart grow fonder.