TR: Cheese, Trains, and Rain ... oh yeah, and some skiing, in Engelberg, CH
So I took a trip across the big, wide pond last week. Got my Euro cherry popped skiing in Engelberg. However, I also spent a lot of time just chilling with the famn damily. Yep, it was one of THOSE trips: skiing wasn't the prime focus here. However, I got in four days of schralping. Often with the family (...b.e.a.t.e.r.s....), and if not, then alone. This prevented me from getting into the real good shit, but I made the best of it. Still got in some good off-piste skiing, just had to be super careful about my terrain choices. It was full on spring in Switzerland, which meant beautiful, green valleys in which we would wake up to rain. It also made for extremely variable snow on the upper mountain. Over four days I skied it all: powder, hard pack, crud, slush, ice, crusts; you name it, I skied it!
Anyway, enough jabbering. What everyone wants to see: the pics!!
Our journey begins in the same place as all great ski trips...
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London... I won't lie here, not one of my favorite places on the world. But I made due. This is where I met my family. The pops has a gig teaching here this semester, so he's been living in the north burb's. I'm not sure how anyone could live here for very long; but then again, I'm not sure if I could live in any metropolis, period.
We did make it out of the city one day. Cruised out to Dover, acted like touists, took pictures. I tried to getting a pic of the famed white cliffs, but this damn seagul just kept flying into the shot.
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All in all, I think my mood while in London can be summed up with the following pictures...
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Ok, what were we doing... Oh yeah, skiing, that's right...
Traveling to Engelberg meant a brief overnight in Lucerne. The town is on a very big lake and is infested with swans, ducks, and other aquatic faul.
12 swans a sleeping...
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Mallard.
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Cutie mallard-chick.
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Lake stoke.
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Ah yes, what a nice city. So calm and peaceful . . . Oh shit, skiing!! I'm here to ski!!!!! Getting there required one of these.
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Well, what is there to say about Engelberg? I'll be breif: the scenery is mind-blowing, the mountians are big...very very big, the people were friendly (even to my Deutch-impaired self), and the town itself is just the cutest little village I've ever seen. Like something out of a story book...
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This monastery was built in the 12th century.
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The hotel room had a balcony. I could stand on it and see lots of things. Like this, the Laub.
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Or this.
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Alright, about damn time for some meager skiing stoke. Sitting on top of the Laub.
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I skied this area three times on the trip. The first and last days were very soft and nice. This day, day three, I hit it too early in the day with no fresh snow. It hadn't had time to thaw out yet, and after 200' of fluff, I was up against 2700' of solid ice. Ugg. Here's the view from the bottom, about to start the slog out.
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Like I said earlier, I skied a lot with my dad and little step-sister. This meant slowing down the pace, sitting back, and just enjoying being in the mountains!!!
I did manage to do a wee-bit of exciting stuff. Off Jockpass, I took my step-sister out to the off-piste for her first time. We skied super thick, heavy once-was-pow. T'was pretty damn fun, actually. Here's the little one.
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We switched positions. She makes a decent photog...
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On our third run in this area, this happened while I was standing right about where you see the two skiers. Textbook wet slide. It began with a small point-release up in the chute that stepped down to a slab when it opened up a bit. It was very slow moving and mostly benign. But still, it freaked me out. Needless to say, I stopped lapping that.
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The old man has no desire to get off the pistes. He learned to ski the same time I did. I was 10, but he was 49. These days, he's still a beater to the core, but he's happy as a clam with his status. He fucking loves making a ton of huge turns, inching his way down the groomers. Whatever floats your boat...
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