Sunday in the Park

On Sunday afternoon, Pat, a mechanic who can fix any ski doo within an hour, organized a game of snow soccer. Snow soccer is a more difficult sport than expected. The entire strategy behind soccer is to plant your feet, make cuts and juke your opponent. Image trying to make a quick cut on slippery snow, as you can imagine it doesn’t work very well. Snow soccer should always be played in the forward direction with passes not dribbling. Do not try and dribble around your opponent you will eventually slip and fall. When playing defense do not try and rotate from running forwards to backward you will fall. Ok now that you understand the difference in strategy between snow soccer and real soccer remember that you are playing at over 3000 meters in altitude. Hope your lungs are healthy.

Here was my snow soccer strategy. Because I have been digging, digging, digging and skate skiing in the evening, my lungs are beginning to feel a bit better at altitude. My soccer opponents were mainly sitting taking samples. I saw their weakness and even though they were much more skilled soccer players than I, I would simple run after every ball. Even if I didn’t really want to get the ball, running would cause the opponent to sprint to get the ball first. Soon enough my mark was gasping for air and I was able to get a shot on the goal. Of course it would have helped if I could actually get the ball between the posts. At the end of the day I got in a good hours worth of running and one gooooooooooooooooooooooooooaal.

After soccer, we opted for a less running intensive game of snow volleyball. Oh I forgot to mention that my snow soccer career ended with me running after a stray ball. Please note how well this fit my winning strategy. As I was sprinting across the snow after my stray ball I was suddenly stopped. I had been cloths lined by the volley ball net guide line. I went out on injury, a large rope burn on my neck. I am of course fine. The soccer game ended in a tie and now to the point of this paragraph, snow volleyball commenced. More people were up for snow volleyball, so we played three games.

After all this Sunday activity I took a nap. Sorry I don’t have any pictures of all these rare snow sports. I will try and get some form other people. All the soccer running wore me out so I did not walk to my tent to get my camera.