Klosters

Last weekend, I joined Christine, Simon and five of Simon's university friends for three days of skiing in Klosters / Davos. We skiied all day Saturday, Sunday and Monday, before taking Monday night flights back to London for reality Tuesday morning. A few of my photos are posted here.

On Friday morning, I took my skis, boots and other assorted stuff for the trip with me into the office. Remarkably, I didn't get any weird looks as I carried these huge bags on the tube, while wearing a suit.

I left the office and took the DLR to City Airport for a late afternoon flight. One of the other guys on the trip, whom I'd never previously met, was on the same flight from LCY, so we'd exchanged numbers via email and figured we would meet in the terminal. On the DLR, though, my phone rang, I saw it was "Ski Erik" (as I'd entered his number into the phone the previous night) and answered. He was standing next to me. Small world!

After we met the rest of the group in Zurich airport, the seven of us piled into two cars and drove up to Klosters. We found an authentic Swiss German restaurant for a late dinner, had a few beers and were off for sleep at a relatively sane hour.

Saturday morning, we had breakfast, bought tickets and were on our way up to the mountain before 9am. It was still snowing, but looked like the sun was going to break through. We got into a gondola to go up to the slopes, along with 100 or so others, and started the trip. No more than a minute after leaving the base, the gondola suddenly stopped, turning its momentum into a scary pendulum motion. This happened another two times, before we limped back down to the base. After a 30 minute wait, we got into the gondola again and had much better luck the second time!

The snow was great all three days -- we'd had about 6" of powder overnight Friday into Saturday, and the sun broke through the clouds shortly after we got onto the mountain Saturday morning. Through the afternoon, clouds rolled into the lower valleys, giving a really weird perspective -- you could see crystal clear blue skies all around, with the tops of clouds far below. It started snowing late Saturday afternoon and continued all through Sunday into the early morning hours of Monday. Skiing off piste was amazing on Sunday -- there were easily accessible places with at least 18" of nearly untouched powder! Unfortunately, though, the visibility went drastically downhill later in the day. Everyone else headed back to the base at 2pm or so, but I figured I'd get in "just one or two" more runs. It ended up being so foggy that I couldn't see the t-bar two in front of mine going up the mountain, and I had to basically snowplow marker-to-marker down a blue slope, straining to see anything other than just pure white. Monday, though, by far made up for any losses there -- it was about -10C, no wind, and not a cloud in the sky all day!

We went into Davos for dinner and drinks on Saturday night, meeting up with a few of Tony's local friends. Sunday night was much more low-key, but we found an amazing restaurant in Klosters that served fondue!

So, this was my first time skiing in Europe. It was a remarkably different experience than skiing in Colorado or Utah -- not necessarily better or worse, but definitely different. Lift tickets were cheaper than in the States, but everything else was substantially more expensive than it would have been at Vail, Aspen or any of the other largest US resorts. A simple lunch on the mountain cost at least US$20, and dinners were substantially more. As several people had told me, the mountain was also laid out substantially differently. Whereas the US resorts tend to have wide-open trails and large bowls, this resort covered at least as much area, but with more winding, narrow trails and fewer wide open areas.

The mountain seemed like it had much less capital invested in it than most in the States -- fewer lifts, less recently renovated lodges, and the like. Also, the towns had much more a feeling of old money -- whereas Vail, Aspen or many other ski towns in the west have an ostentatious feeling of new money, these towns felt much less showy and in many ways more authentic.