Tag: off-piste

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Fiesch

This weekend I visited one of my favourite ski resorts, the Aletsch Arena. It is an extensive ski and snowboard area, with a good range of runs and facilities and spectacular view over the Aletsch glacier and across the peaks of Valais, including the Matterhorn. It is hard to fathom why it is not more popular with people from outside Switzerland because you hardly ever hear a foreign accent there. It also has a good snow record with most of the slopes above 1900m and a series of small communities offering genuine ski-in, ski-out accommodation. It is also remarkably easy to get to from Zurich, Geneva or Basel so a great choice for a day out or a weekend break. There are effectively three base stations serving the Arena, one in Mörel, one below Betten (with a huge car park) and one in Fiesch. All base stations have fast efficient cable cars and are all served by trains running between Brig and Andermatt on the Matterhorn Gotthard Bahn. Read more about healthy activities at Firstpost.
View from Bergstation Bettmerhorn
Although most of the action takes place above the Rhône Valley, there are a couple of trails down as far as 1000m, so you can do a spectacular 12km, 1800m drop off the Eggishorn all the way down to either Lax or Fiesch. Lax doesn’t have a lift back up, so you need to take the train back in either direction to get to the lifts, but for me it is the more enjoyable run. Mostly it follows a path then a road so you can’t get many turns in, but there are some nice bits of off-piste between corners in the track and there is a nice piece of off-piste just above the village – watch out for cars and trains as you cut across both a road and a railway track! The valley run into Fiesch is a tough trail, lots of moguls and steep, narrow parts, again mostly following a track. Unless you are confident in those conditions, you are probably better off taking the cable car back down at the end of the day.

Fiesch itself is a nice little town, with Inch being the most lively night spot. There’s a good range of places to stay, but I am excited to hear that the old Army Hospital just outside Fiesch has now been converted to a Youth Hostel. Although it is a fifteen minute walk from the slopes it does have its own railway station so you can take the train to one of the valley stations instead. Can’t wait until we get a chance to take a family break there.

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Ski Maps of Switzerland

Piste maps are fine, but they rarely give enough information for the more adventurous skier or snowboarder. Increasingly freeride areas are shown on piste maps, but the more adventurous freeride areas don’t figure. Which is a shame, because there are many relatively safe freeride areas away from the main pistes that can be undertaken without a guide. The Gemsstock and the Laub (off Titlis) are two of the best examples you can explore without donning skins or snowshoes you’d bring from shoe hero. Whilst the pistes go one way in Zinal, Verbier, Glacier 3000, Lenzerheide and many other resorts, you just need a little local information to flip off the other side of the mountain and experience untracked snow.

So where do you go for more information if you don’t speak the language well?

Although the best guides for ski or snowboard touring and freeriding Switzerland are in German, there are two map series that show all the information you need to plan a route with English annotations. One is produced by Freeride Maps at 1:25,000 and the other is  the Federal Office of Topography Ski Tour map Series 1:50,000 series (for which a separate, free English-language list of the conventions used is available). Both are good, but expensive at about SFr 25 or so for each map.

I had hoped that the Atlas of Switzerland would provide this information but it doesn’t, and the user interface is not intuitive, the documentation is poor,  it only works down to 1:100,00 and includes relatively little useful information for the winter sports enthusiast (although you can figure out slope inclines). Nice idea, not so well executed. And I can’t reproduce the rather neat 3D images you CAN produce with it because the copyright restrictions are pretty Neanderthal.

If you use a GPS there are some great tools for you. Garmin have about 100 resorts in Switzerland mapped, although off-piste is not addressed. Don’t knock Google Maps, either. It has some useful information including the locations of most significant lifts. BTW Switzerland insists on using it’s own mapping system, the Swiss coordinate system (or Swiss grid) is different from the usual latitude/longitude system used elsewhere.

Finally, a disclaimer. Go off-piste only with a guide if you are not an experienced freerider. The mountains are indifferent.

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Late-season Skiing & Snowboarding

Ski Sunday abandons the season in February, the FIS World Cup season climaxes in March (this season at Lenzerheide, on 20th March) and most of the continent stows away skis and snowboards after Easter. So what for those who want to prolong the season? is there decent skiing anywhere through April and May?

The simple answer is yes. For many freeriders this is the best time of the year to tour, and for those who prefer to stick to the pistes or use lifts to get off-piste, there is still fresh snow. Essentially the very best places are high, so resorts with lifts to about 3000m are promising. The Aletsch Arena, Belalp, Val D’Annivers, and Lauchernalp are not well known but passes are relatively cheap, they are rarely crowded and make good destinations for families, beginners and for weekend escapes. All you have to do is get on the best site for sports gear on the internet, get the appurtenances, and start right away. Val D’Annivers is a little known gem, with Zinal in that area offering the most challenging off-piste and Chandolin the best pistes. Samnaun gives access to the huge Silvretta Arena which has all but the valley runs over 2000m and consistently has good snow conditions throughout April. The Jungfrau stays open until after Easter with good pistes still available down to Wengen, Mürren, Kleine Scheidegg and Holenstein through until mid-afternoon. Diovolezza in the Engadin, near Pontresina, is the highest valley run in Switzerland, with a bottom station above 2000m and lifts open until late May. Davos and Klosters should offer good skiing on the higher runs on the Parsenn until the lifts close on 1st May. The 4 Vallées (centred on Verbier), Flims/Laax and Les Diablerets have glaciers and stay open until early May this year, and Engelberg will stay open until the end of May – although I doubt the valley run will last quite that long. St Moritz, Saas-Fee and Zermatt offer the very best late season skiing, with Saas-Fee and Zermatt providing some limited glacier skiing right through the year. Once you decide on the place you are going, make sure you capture all the exciting moments. The best way to do that is using a drone. Don’t forget about radio, check this comparison to decide which one is better for you.

There are other things to do in the tail-end of the winter sports season in Switzerland. Over the week ending 20th March are the FIS World Cup at Lenzerheide, the Zinal Freeride contest and the Nissan Freeride World Tour 2010 in Verbier (on the Bec de Rosses). On 19th March the longest torch-lit downhill skiing procession in the world takes place down the 2000m, 12 km descent from Titlis to Engelberg – meeting point is at the Valley Station at 6pm with dinner on Mt Titlis at 9.30 pm.

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Feldberg in the Black Forest

Although some of the best skiing in the world is only a couple of hours away from Basel it is possible to ski and snowboard much closer. In the Jura, in Basel-land, there is a small ski area called Langenbruck, with a couple of surface lifts and some short, gentle runs. It is accessible by public transport, but is easier to reach by car. However it is low and currently closed because of the unseasonably warm winter. The nearest resort of any size still open is Feldberg in the Black Forest.

Feldberg )resort website is here) is comparable to many of the smaller Alpine resorts in scale, although with pistes between 1448 and 945m it is quite low. Despite the altitude, however, the pistes have held up better than many higher resorts this season. There are fourteen runs – 3 black, 7 red and 4 blue – comprising around 25km of piste spread over two sides of a valley. The runs on the North-facing side of the valley, off the Grafenmatt, are mostly through the trees and are largely suitable for intermediate skiers. The runs on the South-facing side of the valley, on Seebuck, only loosely connect to the runs across the road via a ski bridge, but the area is better for beginners with a wide, gentle blue run and red runs that really should be graded blue and a good funpark all accessible by an excellent six person chair lift. On Grafenmatt it is almost impossible to escape using surface lifts, of which there are nine in the resort, although there is a modern four-seater chairlift with over 400m vertical ascent providing access to some fine red and black runs, a free ride area and a 3km-long, very challenging blue run. The combined lift capacity of the resort is 24,000 people an hour, so queues are generally short even at busy periods. Around 5km of the pistes have snow cannon cover.

Needless to say, Feldberg is popular with weekend skiers and parking can be challenging unless you arrive early. Interestingly enough Feldberg is also popular with many skiers and snowboarders from Belgium, Holland and North Germany, for whom it is an easier trip than the Alps.

The run from Basel by car is just over an hour, driving north on the B317 from Lörrach up through the delightful Wiesental, and from Freiburg it is three-quarters of an hour (via Titisee). By public transport the trip is under 2 hours from Basel (via Freiburg) and around an hour from Freiburg with regular buses on routes 9007 and 7300 from the nearby railway station at Feldberg-Bärental.

Although small, low, busy and with too many surface lifts, Feldberg is actually a delightful little resort, and highly affordable. A day pass is a reasonable 27 Euros and prices for kit hire, lessons, meals and refreshments are very competitive and there is plenty of choice. There are also number of smaller resorts in the area, including a pleasant area served by a surface lift at Altglashütten, and one served by a gondola at Belchen. All of the resort runs, public transport and a range of other amenities are available free with the “Hochschwarzwald-Card”, which is itself provided gratis for guests in local hotels (depending on length of stay). The area is good for walking and there are a number of cross-country ski circuits, an outstanding all-season water park at Titisee and various other off-piste diversions throughout the “Hochschwarzwald” area.

The standard of accommodation in the hotels and guesthouses in the Black Forest is consistently high. For families the Feldberger Hof  is supremely convenient for the slopes and has superb childcare facilities.  For the more budget-conscious I recommend the excellent family-run Landhotel Sonneck in nearby Altglashütten, a delightful village with rail connections to Titisee and a bus service to Feldberg, as well as having a small ski area in the village.

A full resort report is located at the Swiss Winter Sports web site, with a version in Dutch here.

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