Tag: freeride

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Back country skiing in the Engelberg valley

I have often heard it rumoured that in the Engelberg valley lurk many hidden stashes of lift-served back country off-piste. From Titlis itself there are several areas of off-piste, the Laub being the most famous. There is also one route off Klein Titlis itself down towards Trübsee via the Steinberg some friends of mine have skied, although I have not tried it myself.

I know you can ski from the top of the Fürenalp cable car – again I have not tried it, but I know there is a trail back down to the valley floor which I guess presents at least one option. The lift company identifies a 1000m toboggan run, a 1500 winter walk and snowshoe trail as well as ski touring options at the top. There is also a restaurant. One to add to the list for sure.

Anyway, I came across an article at Worldcrunch which finally addressed the rumour. Apparently there is a lift, Sesselbahn Brisen, which ascends the Haldigrat below Engelberg to provide access to a large unprepared area of snow from 1937m.
Sesselbahn Brisen - photo: raffaconzinu via Instagram
The owner of the lift, Kurt Mathis, is quite famous, apparently, and the lift is possibly not as obscure as I had thought – even featuring in a film and having its own website. The lifts operate 9am-4pm at weekends and on public holidays in the winter season. Kurt’s wife, Antoinette, runs a restaurant and guesthouse at the top. A webcam is here. To get to the Haldigrat by train, take the Engelberg service from Luzern and get off at the request stop Niederrickenbach Station, just after Dallenwil, then take the cable car to Niederrickenbach itself and take a sign-posted 30-minute walk on a broad and well-maintained path to the valley station of the chairlift from Alpboden up to the Haldigrat. There is parking at the bottom of the Niederrickenbach cable car. Although there are no recorded fatalities or significant avalanche risks, the ski area is not only unprepared but also unpatrolled.

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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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