Flumserberg is advertised as Zurich’s mountain. Closest by train, you can take a funicular right from the train station and you’re there. Flumserberg also has Thursday and Saturday night skiing! They have an uphill track on one piste where you bring your headlamp and they groom the slope. If you’re not feverish for vert, you can also have a nice fondue dinner on the piste with your workout. This all sounds so nice as advertised, but I assure you it was not that easy! 

It was the day before Sundar Day (Google gave everyone December 17th off). So I’m rushing to finish work and errands before we’re supposed to meet Eric (our new WhatsApp group friend) at Flumy. Freddy had done all the planning, and I am dazed and confused, ski equipment flapping on the outside of my backpack because I didn’t have time to stuff everything inside as we ran to catch the 7 tram. As I repacked my bag in the tram, Freddy realized we’d missed our connection, so we threw our bags off at Tunnelstrasse. Lucky for us we had enough time to make our next train, the S2. Our next surprise was realizing that the S2 only goes to Unterterzen (where the funicular is) on weekends. In addition to that we were night skiing, so we would have had to thread the needle of a four minute connection to make the last funicular up to the wrong side of the resort where night skiing was. Sheesh! This was getting more complicated than we wanted for a Thursday night shake out. We discussed turning around at this point, but we’re stubborn fools who have a hard time grasping the sunk cost fallacy. We continued. 

We regrouped and transferred trains at Zeigelbrucke, which took us to the town of Flums. We caught a bus with a very gutsy driver who did not flinch at the switchbacked, snow-covered road. They dropped us off right at the bottom of the piste, so we headed up! Freddy was on a mission to do a vertical K, so he pushed me, making me do stints of very fast skiing. It’s not particularly inspiring to walk straight up a steep icy piste where you can only see what is lit up with your headlamp, so best to make a workout out of it! I got passed by many skimo dads who actually had tight race suits, long poles, 65 mm width skis, and helmets at the ready. It’s really quite a look especially when they’re in a pack, but they’re so efficient I can’t even make fun of them as I heave my mouth-breathing body uphill. 

A quarter of the way up, the inversion layer broke to a quiet and spectacular view of the Alps looking like they were suspended in space, lit up by the almost full moon. It was the first time that week I had gotten above the clouds, and it felt marvelous. Maybe this wasn’t such a bad idea.

We kept going, which felt quite long since I had no concept of our relative gain when all you can see is in your headlamp’s sphere.  Finally we arrived at the top, where there was a refuge with warm fondue inside, but we were in a hurry to catch our train home. We started skiing down the refrozen piste. We did a small second lap so Freddy could get his vert goal, then chattered down to the bus stop, where we were on time to take the last bus down the hill at 8:35 PM. We took this bus to its terminus in Sargons, which is on the Liechtenstein border. This would allow us a direct train back to Zurich HB. We made it back home a little after 10:30 pm.

To sum up our stats: we skied 1000 meters, which took about 2 hours. We were on transit for 4.5 hours. It’s definitely a hard justification post work, so we are back to the drawing board to answer the fundamental question of if Zurich has pre-work/post-work ski access.

You may be wondering, where’s Eric? We never caught up to him, as he drove by car to Flumy, taking 45 minutes, and started up with his friend. They did a lap and had a nice fondue dinner, then drove home. My American brain is filled with jealousy on having a car, but we’ve committed to a year of public transit, and we will make it work!