Day 2: Warth-Schröcken
On today’s menu was Warth-Schröcken, which, along with nearby Damüls (I’m going there tomorrow), is considered to be the snowiest region in the Alps, with a reported average of approximately 11.3 meters/440 inches per year.
http://forum.nyskiblog.com/file/n4053895/2aaf1b506a.jpg
As you've probably figured out by now, all things being equal -- I guess that means vacation time, disposable income, availability of frequent flyer miles -- I love skiing in the Alps. That said; there is one part of the Euro skiing experience that most people can do without: storm days at ski areas that are above treeline. And when I say no trees; I mean NO TREES.
It snowed about six inches overnight and continued blasting pretty much all day. Following a white-knuckle drive up a switchbacked road to Warth, it was quickly clear that I wouldn't be leaving the piste today, despite the untracked off-piste goodies pretty much everywhere. Oddly enough, you could see well into the distance, but it was really tough to figure out what was directly under your feet. Pretty much all you had were those markers along the sides of the groomed trails, without which you're SOL.
So the big news -- which happened last year but continues to be a major story -- is/was the installation of the Auenfeldjet gondola, which connects Warth-Schröcken with neighboring Lech. For a variety of reasons too numerous to go into, it took something like 40 years of on-and-off-again negotiations between all sorts of stakeholders before it was approved. To give you an idea of what this is like: culturally, it's kind of like lift-connecting Utah's Brighton ("regular" people who like to ski/ride) with Deer Valley (i.e Europe's 1%).
Here's the interesting part about this gondola -- you ride it from Warth, up and over a bunch of peaks for about ten minutes before arriving at the bottom of Lech's Weibermahd high-speed quad; however, instead of getting off the gondola and walking/over to the HSQ, it literally connects on a shared bullwheel, with two gondola cars alternating with one chair counter-clockwise, over and over, and continuing uphill on the Weibermahd lift. I've yet to see something like this on our side of the Atlantic, where a gondola meets a chairlift at "mid-station" and goes on its merry way as a chondola.
I spent a couple hours revisiting a bunch of runs at Lech from my stays there eight and nine years ago. It even cleared up for a bit.
I liked this advert at a lift base for a doctor who specialises in treating sports-related accidents -- it says "better off with a helmet."
After going back to Warth, we got about ten minutes of blue skies before the whiteout returned:
Needless to say, I'd like to go back on a non-storm day.
On today’s menu was Warth-Schröcken, which, along with nearby Damüls (I’m going there tomorrow), is considered to be the snowiest region in the Alps, with a reported average of approximately 11.3 meters/440 inches per year.
http://forum.nyskiblog.com/file/n4053895/2aaf1b506a.jpg
As you've probably figured out by now, all things being equal -- I guess that means vacation time, disposable income, availability of frequent flyer miles -- I love skiing in the Alps. That said; there is one part of the Euro skiing experience that most people can do without: storm days at ski areas that are above treeline. And when I say no trees; I mean NO TREES.
It snowed about six inches overnight and continued blasting pretty much all day. Following a white-knuckle drive up a switchbacked road to Warth, it was quickly clear that I wouldn't be leaving the piste today, despite the untracked off-piste goodies pretty much everywhere. Oddly enough, you could see well into the distance, but it was really tough to figure out what was directly under your feet. Pretty much all you had were those markers along the sides of the groomed trails, without which you're SOL.
So the big news -- which happened last year but continues to be a major story -- is/was the installation of the Auenfeldjet gondola, which connects Warth-Schröcken with neighboring Lech. For a variety of reasons too numerous to go into, it took something like 40 years of on-and-off-again negotiations between all sorts of stakeholders before it was approved. To give you an idea of what this is like: culturally, it's kind of like lift-connecting Utah's Brighton ("regular" people who like to ski/ride) with Deer Valley (i.e Europe's 1%).
Here's the interesting part about this gondola -- you ride it from Warth, up and over a bunch of peaks for about ten minutes before arriving at the bottom of Lech's Weibermahd high-speed quad; however, instead of getting off the gondola and walking/over to the HSQ, it literally connects on a shared bullwheel, with two gondola cars alternating with one chair counter-clockwise, over and over, and continuing uphill on the Weibermahd lift. I've yet to see something like this on our side of the Atlantic, where a gondola meets a chairlift at "mid-station" and goes on its merry way as a chondola.
I spent a couple hours revisiting a bunch of runs at Lech from my stays there eight and nine years ago. It even cleared up for a bit.
I liked this advert at a lift base for a doctor who specialises in treating sports-related accidents -- it says "better off with a helmet."
After going back to Warth, we got about ten minutes of blue skies before the whiteout returned:
Needless to say, I'd like to go back on a non-storm day.