Out of the last hairpin bend, second gear, a slight sluggishness as the needle sweeps past the lower numbers on the central green dial. Then, gradually, there’s a little more perceptible pressure on your back. Building…building…then woomph! The boost kicks in, augmenting the thin natural atmospheric pickings, the needle accelerates and the Sport Classic surges to the top of the Kaunertal Glacier road, a full 2750m above sea level.
A minute or so later the 911 is parked up and I’m sitting in a different driver’s seat. I can feel my heart beating a little faster just from walking quickly across the car park in the sparsely oxygenated air. Or perhaps it’s just thumping because I’m excited now to be on board a snow-grooming ‘piste basher’. The red monster is parked outside the cable car station at the bottom of the glacier, door open with an accessibility ramp affixed. It’s like a reward for making it to the top of the road.
The wheel looks more like something from an aircraft and there is a joystick to my right in front of a panel with one, two, three…54 buttons surrounding a diagram of the machine. It’s quite intimidating and I’m not sure I could take it for a spin even if the caterpillar tracks were still attached. One day.
