Skiing in the Alps

Last weekend Belinda, Anita, and I piled into the car and headed to the Fellhornbahn, on the border with Austria, to do a little skiing.

The drive on the way down was full of fun and challenges because the water in the windscreen wiper washers had completely frozen (it was around -8C). This meant that we couldn't clear the windscreen of all the snow and salt that was being thrown up off the road.
One solution that did work for a while, was driving quite close to the car in front before overtaking it. This way the car would flick up water onto our windscreen, and we could then use it to clear the windows. Inventive, huh?

Apparently we weren't the only ones that this was happening too. When we stopped at a roadhouse on the autobahn, there were heaps of cars there cleaning their windscreens, adding anti-freeze stuff to the washer reservoir, etc. Problem is, once the water is frozen, the anti-freeze doesn't actually acheive anything, so we all kept on driving essentially blind. It wasn't any better on the way back either, with us stopping every now and then to pour water onto the windscreen to clear it.

Anyway, Fellhornbahn was kick-arse! Lift lines were basically non-existant, the snow was in awesome condition, and the runs also weren't too crowded. If there was one complaint, it was that there was too much snow, so the runs did chop up into bumps later in the day - oh well, it's a nice problem to have. :)

At one point in the morning, I missed a turn on a run, and ended up leaving the piste. This was cool for a while - while the snow was only knee deep - but kinda sucked when it got waist deep and I didn't have enough speed to keep going. It took me about 10min to dig myself out and hike back down to the trail. :)

In the afternoon, we were a little late getting off the mountain. Last run is at 16:30, and the last Gondolla down was at 17:00. We were coming down our final run when we heard a constant beeping, and looked up to see the groomers coming up the trail. We had to bail off the trail, and Belinda ended up chest-deep in snow. It took her and Anita about 10min to dig and drag her out, and we only just made it down in time for the last Gondolla.

Here are some pics:


Tschüß,
'Brush