Author: lisa

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!

I’ve been obsessed with Chamonix for a long time. It is an intoxicating place where you can sip espresso in a cafe and know with some certainty that the guy who just walked by you in the Petzl thong definitely did something rad that day.  The town has a potent mixture of accessible-yet-mega objectives in many sports. To sum it up: stoke-inducing!

When our new friend Felipe posted on the Zurich Googler Skier Forum that he was looking for partners to do an AIARE 2 course in Chamonix, I thought it would be an excellent opportunity to continue my avalanche education while going back to a place that is quite meaningful.

Felipe and his wife Leslie gave us a ride from Zurich to Chamonix (in their Subaru Outback!). Felipe is Brazilian, and Leslie is an American PhD student at ETH. They live in Andermatt (a great basecamp for both skiing and climbing) and are kind people we hope to do more exploring with. 

The road from Martigny is a series of switchbacks on a barely 2-lane road that has been featured in the Tour de France. Add on the meter of snow that the area had received in the last week and I was very happy I was not driving! We crossed the unguarded border into Vallorcine then took the tunnel into Chamonix because the Col des Montets was closed. In the morning we walked outside and HOLY it had snowed at least 40 cm overnight on top of the meter that had already fallen in the week prior. Fat flakes were still coming down. We walked to Chamex to meet our instructor Danny.

Danny is from Boise, with a ton of experience and a teaching style that could be described as stream of consciousness. Each day, we would start by making a plan in the AIARE booklet:

• Who are you touring with?
• What are the avalanche conditions?
• What’s the weather?
• What’s the terrain plan?
• What risks are you taking on with that plan?
• What will you do in an emergency?

It was level 5 avalanche danger because of the sheer amount of snow. The Mayor of Chamonix tweeted that it was the most snow Chamonix had experienced in mid-December since the 1950s. Needless to say, we decided to stay out of avalanche terrain that day! We went up the valley to Le Tour, which has great low angle options though you could certainly get into some fun trouble if conditions were right. By just walking up the cat track to ski a 25 degree slope we set off a small avalanche that sympathetically triggered another below. We turned around, skiing down the gentle piste, getting face shot after face shot. It was so light and deep that you really had to time when you went up for air!! As you are supposed to do in avalanche education, we debriefed after a glorious day in the falling snow, dissecting when we were most at risk, what we thought went well, etc. Additionally, Fred and I had an incredible tartiflette, which dare I say might be my favorite way to enjoy cheese and potatoes.

The next day, we also skied at Le Tour, getting higher since it was not actively snowing. We still stayed out of avalanche terrain and dug a pit just to understand temperature gradients, which helped me visualize snow metamorphism and how problematic layers can stick around. The sheer amount of snow that had fallen was pretty spectacular: our pit was 160 cm deep, most of which had come in the last week. My highlight was Freddy finding a skintrack that was too gentle even for him! Imagine what the Jake’s skintrack layer would say! Additionally, we went to an exquisite cheese shop called L’alpage des Aiguilles, where a short cheesemonger with an extravagant updo told us the Beauforte d’étè was *chef’s kiss* so we had to get some along with a Reblochon. I know this has nothing to do with skiing, but Freddy made an incredible Tartiflette from the Reblochon later in the week. Wow, French cheese..what else can I say?

On Sunday, we skied at Flegère (tickets were 52 Euros for a full day), which is the resort on the sunny side of the Chamonix valley with a fat view of the Mont Blanc Massif. It was a total Type 1 day: full fun in the sun and it had only 30% of the angry thirst you feel in the KT line on a powder day. From an avalanche learning perspective, it was hard to make objective decisions about the snowpack with everyone skiing everywhere. We skied a cool SW facing couloir that was rather enjoyable, and we had a good discussion on why we felt comfortable skiing in avalanche terrain.

To summarize my AIARE 2 experience: You’re paying someone to help you verbalize and justify every decision you make in the backcountry. What would you ski on a Level 3 day? How is stability trending? What uncertainty do you have? Is this skintrack in a runout zone? Should we ski this one at a time? Where is a safe place to wait for you? I thought it was a good exercise because it’s scary to think about the amount of “right” decisions you need to make in avalanche terrain and never knowing if you’re getting lucky. The learnings I felt that I have latched onto the most are:

• Runlist: put all your ski tours you do regularly on a list and say under which avalanche rating/problem you would feel comfortable with – there’s a site in CH that kind of does that for you (www.skitourenguru.ch)
• Knowing when you’re entering avalanche terrain and double checking: Danny called this “getting on the bus.” Everytime the group is getting on the bus, stop and take the time to make that decision consciously. This also helped me categorize observations vs decisions

I don’t think one needs to take this class to learn these things (you could do this with your friends or note these things after you tour), but I’m happy to be pushed to explain my decision making since I can’t be reliant on familiar terrain (not that that is the only datapoint your should rely on to make decisions in avalanche terrain!). The Alps feel really fucking big, and for now, I want a big margin for error.

After a divine day of skiing, we started driving home, fulfilled and frothed by the stoke Chamonix inspires. Leslie and Felipe dropped us off in Visp, making the direct train back to Zurich a breeze. Another fun and informative weekend skiing!

After two weekends at Ikea, Freddy and I needed to head to the mountains! In the week coming up to this trip, we were certainly struggling with the weather. It was definitely going to snow – a lot, but slopes at or below treeline did not have a ton of snow, and above, you probably won’t be able to see. We searched and searched, using SwissTopo, MeteoSwiss, Fatmap, and other resources, but honestly didn’t have a great plan. It’s just hard to know where to begin! In the end we booked a hotel in Engelberg because the most important thing is to get out there.

Saturday was definitely the heavy weather day, so we did not try for an alpine start, instead waking up at 7, rummaging through all our bags to find our ski stuff, then hopping on the T7 to start our journey to Engelberg. We went from Wollishofen to Zug to Luzern to Engelberg, taking about 2 hours. The highlight of the train ride was ascending the valley to Engelberg – it starts as a flat valley with green pastures interrupted by quaint villages with cable cars ascending to peaks that were covered in cloudy mystery – needless to say there’s a lot to explore just in this one valley!

We got off the train and took a bus to the bottom of Brunni Engelberg ski resort. It was raining in town, and we wanted to move fast because the rainline was forecasted to move higher. We took the cable car to the mid station with a group of very kitted dudes that were taking a class (turns out one of the was a Googler!). They had a funny saying that at Brunni, it’s always knee deep, you just don’t know if it’s snow, water, or mud.. We got off the cable car, and reality set in – we were about to tour up in the rain. Mustering all the positive energy I had, Freddy and I set off up to the Brunnihütte. 

Lower down, we witnessed interesting avalanche activity – tons of glide avalanches. Shallow snow + plus grassy base + rain event = stuff was sliding to ground, especially where there was wind loading on eastish facing aspects. In some places, there were these cracks where the slab had started to slowly break away from the slab above – an Italian man we met said they call it “bocca di balena” – a whale’s mouth – wouldn’t want to fall in one of those! 

We skinned to the top of Schonegg chair (the resort still hadn’t opened for the season) and dropped down a south east facing slope. The top 200 m was fun heavy pow that slowly turned to mashed potatoes that was very hard to turn in. There was not much else we could do but transition and do it again! Going back uphill, I became extremely conscious of how wet I was. I could feel drops of water running down my legs and my gloves felt like they had gained a kilo with the amount of water. When we got to the Brunnihütte, we took a break. The Brünnihutte is a Swiss Alpine Club hut where you can stay for cheap and have decently priced warm food. We stayed long enough to realize our stuff was not going to get dry. I put on my extra pair of gloves and tried to not think about how the rain had soaked down to my underwear. We finished the second lap and made our way down to town. 

We stayed at the Banklialp hotel, just your standard chalet-looking hotel on the north facing side so you can have a beautiful sunset view of town! After peeling off our wet layers, we went to the sauna. Protip – spas in Europe are clothing optional! It felt incredible to be warm and dry. We slept well that night!

The next day, Freddy indulged me by skiing inbounds at Engelberg Titlis resort. Since we’re carless, we walked 10 min to get to the resort. Tickets are only 72 CHF, a steal compared to what Palisades charges for a lift ticket! 

*INSERTING PERSONAL FRUSTRATION SIDENOTE: Why can’t I pack a backpack like Freddy? It’s an incredible ANGER I feel that I am bearing more of a battle against gravity than someone who is larger/stronger/taller than me. And the problem is I can’t blame him, but deep down I am so MAD that he is better at packing than me, that in my mind he holds this air of superiority as he asks what the hell I brought in my bag. And the answer is I don’t know. I just don’t know how it happens, but it makes me so incredibly frustrated that I am slogging around all these extra trinkets (an extremely heavy pair of shoes, jeans (so I could look good for whom??), 5 pens (I counted), and my super extra heavy puffy that I ended up wearing to prove a point on Sunday but just sweated the entire day). I’M BAD AT PACKING, AND I HAVE A BAD ATTITUDE TOWARDS PACKING.*  

I know this is an oxymoron, but we had a great inbounds powder day. Even with a leisurely 9:45 start, we took the gondola up to Stand then dropped down southwest facing lines that were seriously so fun! The sun would peak in and out of the clouds showing off the remarkable Central Alps in every direction. We chatted up a Coloradan that lives in Palo Alto (small world!) and an Italian man from Como, who showed us Americans around. He kept saying “Yes Engelberg is where you come to freeride.” I have never thought of myself as a “freeride” skier, but I will certainly take the identity! Around three, the vis turned bad and the legs got tired, so we hitched a ride from our new Palo Alto friend (thanks Nathan!) who happened to be staying two streets away from us in Zurich. Though getting to Engelberg by train isn’t bad, it’s only an hour with a car.

En fin, it was a great first weekend skiing in the Alps with my best friend! More to come!