Skiing in Engelberg

Last Sunday I went to Engelberg for a day of skiing. There had been lots of snow during the week and Saturday night, meaning snow conditions were excellent for Sunday. More than excellent, amazing!!! (Is that better than excellent?)

Richard, Evan, Devon, Lindsey, Kevin, Mike and I took the train up early Sunday morning and were on the hill by 9:30ish. Tommy came too, but he made poor decisions and stayed out in Zurich late the night before, and didn't quite make the train the rest of us took. Shane and Adrienn were there too, they had boarded Saturday too and then renegade camped overnight near the hill. Kudos for being hardcore guys!

I skied with Richard and Lindsey all morning, and I'll add here that all pics are courtesy of Richard (thanks!) since I didn't bring my camera. We started out by going right up to the highest peak, which involved a series of gondola (aka, cable car...I just call them all gondolas) rides....European resorts really love their gondolas. The gondola to the very top was some fancy rotating one...the idea was that you could get a nice view, but I thought it was dumb since a) the windows were all frosted over and scratched so you couldn't see anything anyways, and b) only the floor rotated, so you couldn't lean yourself or skis against the wall and had to stand careful not to snag anything on a non-rotating part. Anyways, waste of money...sorry Adrienn ;) (she thought it was cool).






One of the gondola's to the top of the mountain (not the rotating one)














And so ends the gondola rant.....and so beings the wicked morning of powder skiing. I discovered quite quickly that I am severely lacking in the powder skiing mad skillz. My skillz are more moderately angry...or perhaps just a bit annoyed. Anyways, I was falling all over the place, which wasn't so bad since there was a thick cushion of snow to land on (and fill my jacket with). I slowly got the hang of things and by later in the morning I was tearing up some of the runs.



Look at that beautiful snow














Me and Lindsey at the top of the mountain












View from the top...there was an ocean of clouds below us that looked amazing












Another pic from the top...you really feel far away from the rest of the world














Me and Lindsey on the chair lift













Giving my legs a break












Beautiful...
















If you look carefully you can see Mike. It's hard because he's wearing a camouflage jacket.










We tried out a few different runs, and all were even better than the last. By the time it was time to meet for lunch I was feeling happily tired from the morning. We met up with Kevin, Devon and Adrienn (just by chance... I am amazed with how often that happens) and had lunch with them. Devon bought some new poles, since he had broken one during the morning, too bad.




Lindsey and Devon eating lunch. Past the railing is a giant vertical drop, it overlooks a glacier that we watched some (skilled) people ski













Adrienn, Richard and Lindsey at lunch. We're rocking the Nalgene's, lol.











I approve of Kevin's massive sandwich














This pic looks oddly posed...nice group shot though














I should add that the weather was amazing all day, nice clear skis. Every now and then there would be a random fog cloud, but they passed quickly. The only coldish spots were where the wind was gusting at the top of the mountain, but even that wasn't that bad.




Perfect day for skiing










After lunch we ran into Evan and Shane and the group of us (minus Adrienn) (and minus Mike and Tommy) started off on a run through some nice deep powder. The first mentionable event was when Evan dropped a big rock and bailed, losing his skis in the snow. We were looking through the snow, and eventually Shane found it waaay down from where we were looking. It was a pretty lucky find, wow, can you imagine how long we would have been looking for that?!?! (P. S. this is foreshadowing).

So we continued on the run, I was having a great time floating through the powder and then I made a bad turn and fell face-first into the snow. One ski fell off, which had been happening all day...it occurred to me that I haven't adjusted my bindings in years, and they were definiatly not tight enough for the snow were on that day. Only Richard and Lindsey were behind me, so I asked Richard to pass my my one ski which had fallen off....."sure, where is it?" he replied. Hmmm.....where DID that thing go?

The three of us started looking (everyone one else was up ahead, they didn't know what had happened). We dug all around where I fell and found nothing. After about 45min I insisted that they go and get a few runs in, no point in all 3 of us wasting our afternoon of skiing and I obviously had nothing better to do, lol. I started making the search a bit more systematic, starting about 8m down from where I fell and working my way up digging half a meter down sweeping back and forth. At least I had my ipod to keep me company with inspirational digging tunes, lol.

On ski-less hour later, I was happy to look up and see the other guys (Evan, Shane, Devon, Kevin) had come back. They couldn't believe my story that I had been there since the first run and...when we didn't end up at the lift with them they had assumed we had gone somewhere else (they felt bad about not returning right away, even though there was no way they could have known). Everyone spread out to help, and Evan and Shane broke out their shovels.....dig, dig....

Kevin was the hero of the day (though, everyone helped so they are all heroes, thanks guys!!!!), he uncovered my ski slightly further up from where we thought I fell. I was so happy, I had pretty much assumed by that point that it was gone and I would be forced to either find a way to afford new skis or sacrifice the rest of the season.

Only then did I realize how exhausted I was...during the digging I was motivated by the mission to find the ski, but once it was found all I wanted was to get off the mountain. Plus I was paranoid about falling again and ending up skiless again so I was taking things verrry easy. Everything was closing anyways, it was already 4:30 (woot for getting in 1 run after lunch....) so we just took a cruising run down to the base to collect our gear.




Where is my ski?!?!?!?!?!?!?!













Adrienn, me and Lindsey with everyone's gear













Dramatic pic of Richard











Anyways, the awesomeness of the morning almost made up for the crappyness of the afternoon, so I declare the day a success! No skiing next weekend becasue I'm going to Milan to see a football (soccer) game! The weekend after I'll be in Zermatt, so stay tuned for posts about both those things :)