Skiing in China Isn’t What You Think

It's really cool to see this place before it's gonna be a major skiing hub. The first couple of days we got to experience this place and got to explore around the resort. Now it's time to go ski some real stuff and push ourselves. Yeah boy! It's kind of funny because you're not allowed to go off-piste officially but everybody's doing it. Like really everybody. They have these red fences along the slopes everywhere and then you just have to search for a spot, duck under it, be fast. It's kind of a gray area here I feel like and I mean everybody's doing it like hundreds of people are going off-piste so it's not that we are doing something illegal. It's kind of funny it's not officially allowed so yeah you kind of have to do it secretly. Yeah one time we tested the limits and skied on the back side, the very back side, the back country and almost got caught by the border police. So apparently we got lucky. First we were joking okay like if you ski down there there is the police station and yeah we almost skied down there until he was like oh stop stop stop. So yeah then he said we cannot ski down there even though a few locals went down there and now we just spent like half an hour hiking back up here and now he just got a message from his friend that all the people who skied down got taken away by the police. So yeah I guess good decision to hike up. So yeah we are happy we have our local guide saving us from from Chinese jail. The freeride community is really young here. There is a nice little bubble and there are some good riders here already and that's just two years after they built the ski resort so I'm pretty sure they will grow a bigger community in the next years. Heimu village is a really small town a really small village. They are building and building hotels and everything so I'm scared that Heimu will not be the same in a couple of years. But right now it's this super small and cozy town with all these wooden houses and it kind of also has a ski town vibe like in the Alps. A little bit different for sure. It's nine in the morning and it's still dark kind of. Yeah that's because of the time difference in China. Everybody's in the same time zone and we are on the most western part and yeah so it's only getting bright at like 10 and it stays bright until six I think six seven maybe. The weather is looking good. Let's see what we will find. Avalanche! Stay stay stay stay stay! Yeah we triggered a couple of smaller pockets. The snowpack is very different from from everything I skied in Europe and also anywhere else. It's super dry air so the snow is super dry as well and it's always cold. Even when the sun is shining the snow just stays super dry and light. Also when it snows it's like the craziest champagne powder. These conditions also make it a little bit dangerous. There is no avalanche forecast or something like that yet. We talked with some locals about it and I think they are planning to do it. It's really cool to see this place before it's gonna be a major skiing hub. Like right now the ski resort is pretty much empty and you can ski powder for one week after a snowfall but I'm pretty sure that's gonna change soon. Yo! You're gonna miss this guy. Yeah. You don't want to go. You come to Austria soon. Yeah no problem. It's a wrap. It's a wrap. I'm sad to leave this place. It's been so amazing. We made so many new friends. Everybody has been so nice to us. Thank you guys for watching and for the support. See you next week with a new episode.