Adam Clark spent a few weeks exploring the Carpathian Mountain range that runs from Poland to Romania through Slovakia. He was lucky enough to be on assignment with Powder magazine and editor John Stifter. The feature ran in the October issue of Powder. If you haven’t seen it- buy a subscription! , its only 10 dollars! and if you ski there’s no reason to not be reading it, click here! right now! You can even get an online subscription for 5 bucks if you live in a different country or allergic to paper…

In two weeks around 10,000 photos were taken. Edited down to 1100 and powder ran 23 if you include a sequence shot. So why keep them all on hard drive. Here’s a little more insight into what its like shredding the Carpathians.

We started in Poland, tons of pow, super nice people, strangely good food. Krakow, the capitol was a really fun city with a great nightlife- pretty dark and dreary during the day, but damn fun after the sun goes down. Its illegal to ski off the groomed runs, so after a few days of breaking the law we thought it was in our best interest to go to Slovakia. But first here’s Poland.

Slovakia is gem. After meeting and talking with the locals for awhile we discovered Slovakia doesn’t get much sun. Somehow we were the lucky ones and got a bluebird day. And this place holds some epic big mountains, made for skiing! We only went to one resort-Jasna, and from what we were told its by far the best and probably the only one worth spending time at. You can stay in the naighboring town for 8 bucks a night. There’s a couple long lines you have to deal with on weekends, but it could be worth the trek over here for a sick day in Slovakia.

Romania is full of Gypsies, cheap beer, people that still use horses for transportation, lots of barren fields that look like they should grow something, and if you hit it right a whole bunch of resorts where knowbody skis the powder. You might have to deal with lots of second hand smoke and guys that don’t smile. But the food is pretty good and its skiing in Romania. We hit up a few resorts all of which had good terrain, no crowds and a hint of eastern block architecture-lots of cement and some really old trams. Plus a ton of broke-down buildings. One of the highlights was Balea. You can’t really call it a ski resort. Its one Tram at the end of a road with two hotels at the top. It was made for summer tourists and the people that come up in the winter just spend the night, smoke cigs and throw snowballs. But the hotel happens to be at the bottom of a huge cirque with tons of terrain. You might wake up to a crazy Romanian man telling you to wake up in his boxers eating a block of cheese with the smell of cigarettes, but the world is your oyster outside the front door if you like un-tracked pow and nice coulairs.

Eastern Europe has definately been through all kinds of wars and poverty and it was pretty cool to see a bunch of people stoked on skiing. Although its hard to hit any of these places with good snow and weather, the traveling and unique skiing would make it worthwhile to any adventurous skier.