By Sarah Laird

When I signed up for SASS they said I would be riding with pros but everyone makes big promises. And besides I’m used to hanging out in Breckenridge, Colorado where all the guys use the same pick up line “I’m a professional snowboarder”—meaning "I get paid to ride"—meaning "I work as a snowboard instructor on the bunny hill babysitting peoples kids who actually want to ride." So, naturally that wasn’t my determining factor when I signed up for a summer in Argentina. I simply wanted to improve my skills, meet good people and escape the summer heat for a while.

But of course my cynicism was once again defeated when I sat down for dinner one night and recognized rider Vera Janssen. She arrived separately from everybody else so I was surprised to see her there just hanging with other campers talking about her long flight in and how stoked she was to hit all the fresh snow. As we all loaded the bus the next morning eager to ride I couldn’t help but hope that I would be in Vera’s group. 

It’s as if everyday is Christmas here—there’s always a fresh storm to wake up to and sure enough I was in Vera’s group. You always read about these girls riding hard and getting after it but it’s hard not to put it all up to embellishments. It was her first day out in a couple months and I was still having a hard time keeping up, she was dropping cliffs, slaying powder and hiking the backcountry like it was the peak of mid season. To be honest, I was a little embarrassed, I’ve been riding here for a few weeks now and she was still putting me to shame. But I guess that’s the nature of a pro verse a weekend warrior.

However, the one place I was totally on the same level as Vera was at lunch. As we pulled out our sack lunches graciously supplied by SASS we both immediately devoured the alfajore—the local Argentine cookie filled with dulce de leche and graham cracker, I knew I had an in. I took advantage of this little idiosyncrasy and started up a conversation in efforts to learn more about who she was both on and off the mountain. Here’s what I asked and her witty responses:

Me: How does it feel to be chasing winters?
Vera: Cold

Me: How many in a row?
Vera: This is actually my first summer down south – I never had the opportunity to south America before and I didn’t want to go to New Zealand because I don’t like their accents.

Me: What’s an average day at home like?
Vera: Wake up, look outside to make sure the forecast was correct, go shred. On sunny days I shoot and on crappy days I just ride. After shredding I cook an awesome healthy, vegetarian meal and after eating that I’m usually pretty tired. Throughout the day I check my emails probably a million times and brush my teeth twice.

Me: What’s the strangest thing so far in Argentina?
Vera: You don’t throw your toilet paper into the toilet – you put it in the trash bin, so it’s full of s*** tickets. Its gonna take the me entire two months here to get used to.

Me: What’s the best part of the mountain?Vera: Laguna is my favorite zone. It is a backcountry bowl that is hike accessible from the ski area and you can just traverse right back to the chair lift. After it snowed it took 4 days to get tracked out and on the 4^th day we were still finding great snow.

Me: What is really unique to the mountains in Argentina?
Vera: Cliffs don’t have signs on top of them that say “cliff” so you want to watch out where you go. It’s kind of like that in Europe, too, actually.

Well, there you have it.  Vera Janssen at her best, in the middle of an awesome day on the hill and eager to return.