And Marius' freeride road trip continues, always in search of the best and deepest snow: sometimes criss-crossing, sometimes criss-crossing the Alps...
Stormy winds ...
Thanks to southerly and westerly gales, the weather conditions on Monday, March 10, made skiing in the northern Alps no fun. So I decided to have a downday; sleep in and relax a bit in Feldkirch. In the evening, my better half joined me by train. The strong south föhn tried to keep us in the north, but it was powerless against 122 horsepower and finally let us chug comfortably south (Chur/Lugano). When we arrived at the San Bernardino Pass, we were greeted by increasingly heavy snowfall. At the southern end of the tunnel, to our astonishment, the snow chaos was omnipresent. A halfway cleared parking lot seemed to be the only solution to survive the night. At around 3 a.m., however, the large garage next to us suddenly came to life and the snow clearing service's fleet of vehicles set to work. At around 5 o'clock there was a rude knock on the bus. When we politely asked if we should leave, the answer was: "YES, must go. Okay, so to the next parking lot at the local petrol station. Here, too, our night's rest came to an end at around 6 a.m. as the snow clearing vehicles had worked their way there. Our breakfast was then inspected by around 50 students from an Italian tour group. Now we know how animals feel in the zoo.
At least the early wake-up call had one good thing: Bluebird and some fresh snow had accumulated here over the last few days. There's not much to say about the area, a little more inclination would certainly do it good ;-)
Nevertheless, we had one of the best days of the season with around 60 cm of fresh snow and glorious weather. The pictures should underline this.
After this exhausting day, we decided to stay in the parking lot and wait to see where the snowfall and cloud line would settle.
Both were not to our satisfaction on the following Wednesday morning and we decided to spend a leisurely spring day in the southernmost city in Switzerland: Lugano. At around 20°, the stroll through the city followed by a trip to Switzerland's largest outlet center in Mendrisio was very pleasant. The decision to leave the summer was a difficult one; however, the destination for Thursday (Andermatt) should finally offer enough compensation...
Thursday - March 13
Arriving very early in Andermatt, the mood dropped to zero thanks to the dense cloud cover in the village. The LLB predicted rain up to about 2200 meters and heavy clouds without further precipitation. There was also no WiFi in the village... To my surprise, however, the DVB-T reception was working - and fortunately the current webcam images were also shown on CH television. At first it was a disappointment, as the weather in St. Moritz was probably the best and there was fresh snow, but as soon as the picture switched to Andermatt, the corners of our mouths went up in a flash, our eyes started to sparkle, we frantically cleared away the leftovers from breakfast and headed for the Gemsstockbahn parking lot as quickly as possible.
At the top, 20 cm of fresh snow and perfect visibility awaited us again. A few runs later, however, we soon realized that half of Scandinavia was on the mountain again. Not that I personally have anything against this species of people, but the general behavior of these people on the mountain is really outrageous. They push and shove in the lift (you could miss something), and they always ski the slopes in groups at the same time. Apparently, this behavior helps them to suppress their fear of alpine dangers... but if you're on the same slope yourself and prefer the right kind of risk management, you don't find this behavior particularly funny.
After a few runs on the "Bernhard Russi"descent, we tried another lap of the rocky valley. Top conditions at the top and very few tracks, but down in the bushes somewhere between lousy and super lousy thanks to the rain. As the many people in the Guspis deterred us from going down there, and the other variants were already rutted or too bad at the bottom, we took the wind out of our sails around 2 pm and called it a day. After another night of uncertainty as to where the next day of skiing would take place, we decided on Engelberg in the morning of March 14, as we thought the heavy cloud cover was most likely to break up here. But here, too, the clearing was a long time coming. Around midday, the webcam showed the best weather, but the summit lift to Kleintitlis remained closed for the time being. We decided to head home again, as we still had urgent discussions to have with the German authorities. Unfortunately, we left 30 minutes too early, as the summit lift opened immediately after our descent and the finest untracked powder without competition awaited the few who managed to get up there. The unexpected often happens.
