Skiing in Saas-Fee, the full post.

This past Saturday, I went skiing with my colleague Laura in Saas-Fee. We caught a 7 am train, which was a little on the early side for me, but Saas-Fee is 3 hours away, so we needed to have an early start if we wanted to ski at all before noon. The train and bus were pretty crowded with other people heading into the mountains for skiing. It has been so warm that there are not so many areas left with good snow, but Saas-Fee still had really nice conditions, with most of the runs still open. Saas-Fee is one of the higher skiing areas in Switzerland, and you can actually go skiing year-round on the glaciers here, from what I understand.

We were on the piste by about 11 am, and it was truly gorgeous. Sunny and warm (but not too warm), and the skiing was not too crowded. I never really had to wait at a lift, and it was easier to ski without worrying that I would collide with someone.

Laura is a better skier than I, so we parted ways for the rest of the morning. I stayed on a very nice, mellow blue run and tried to get the feel of skiing again, and tried to push myself to go faster, since I tend to be a nervous skier. I just want to stay under control, but some people have told me that it is easier if you're willing to go a little faster. So I was trying to go faster! I'm not sure whether or not it is actually easier, but maybe it's funner!

Laura and I had a picnic lunch in the sun, with a great view of all of the mountains, and then we took a gondola and a underground tram up to the top of the ski area, at 3500 m. The view was really amazing!

I didn't ski up there, as the runs were more difficult, but I found another really nice blue piste that went halfway down the mountain, and I started to get faster. In fact, I could almost keep up with Laura when she joined me at the end of the day!

Of course, then we had the last run of the day. I have decided that last runs are not the best idea. It's always the last run when something happens. Laura and I had decided to take a long piste all the way down to the village from the middle of the mountain. We got a little way down, past the point of no return, when the blue piste was closed, and our only option was a steep, narrow red run! Not only was it super steep, but it was the end of the day, so the conditions were not ideal. There were tons of other skiers making their last run, and the piste had turned to almost bare ice in parts, with mounds of icy snow in other parts. I really had a small meltdown. I knew that I had to get down, but I was a little paralyzed, and I couldn't convince myself to turn. I ended up sliding down sideways for a while, until Laura could encourage me enough to try to turn. I think I was mostly freaked out because I had not so much room to turn, and every time I hit a mound of snow I would lose control a little, and I was so tired that I didn't have the strength to push through the snow. Thankfully, Laura was patient, and we eventually came across an open blue run for the rest of the way down the mountain, at which point I was able to collect myself and go a little faster. Oh, skiing.

Other than my little episode at the end of the day, I really enjoyed skiing at Saas-Fee. I think it might be my favorite ski area so far! Not a bad way to end the ski season!

Skiing in Saas-Fee!

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View of the piste at Saas-Fee today. It was so nice!

Sent from my iPhone

Skiing in Elm: the full post.

This past weekend I went on a ski trip to Elm with a group of 22 people from my institute at ETH. Over half of the people were from my research group, and the rest were from the microbiology group with whom we share a lab.

We got up bright and early on Saturday morning to take the train together to Elm. Of course, my tram happened to be late (which hasn't happened to me before), so I missed my connection and was really late getting to the train station. I literally had to sprint from the tram to catch the train, which made me pretty happy that I wasn't also hauling skis in addition to my overnight bag, sleeping bag, and ski helmet. Thankfully, I made the train in time.

Once we got to Elm, those who needed to rented our skis and then we took the gondola up to the ski hut where we stayed overnight. It was a really sweet set-up, since the ski hut was basically in the middle of the moutain: 25 m from the top of one gondola and 100 m from the bottom of another that would take you to the top. We dropped our stuff off and hit the pistes.

The weather was really perfect. It was sunny and totally clear, with lots of new snow. I haven't seen the sun in what seems like a very, very long time, so it was really nice. Although I, of course, didn't think about putting on sunscreen until it was too late and ended up looking a little like a lobster with a very nice outline where my sunglasses were. I even got sunburned under my chin, because of the reflectivity of the snow!

Lilli and Jan and I, who went to ski school together, decided to start out by going up to the top and then going down a blue piste to get warmed up before our private lesson.

Big mistake.

While Lilli and I were maybe a little more comfortable because we had been skiing the weekend before, the slopes at Elm were much steeper and busier that any that we had been on before, which made it really hard. Not only that, but we saw a helicopter picking up an injured person off of the slopes, which is not always a good sign. Basically, we had a bad experience.

After skiing once down, we retired to the ski hut to recover and have a little lunch before our lesson. The view from the ski hut was really amazing!

At noon our lesson started, and it really was the best lesson so far. (Although I guess I've only had two lessons, so I don't have a huge basis for comparison...) The instructor was really helpful and was great at finding ways to help you remember to be in the proper form. Unfortunately, my boots were much too large, so I was sliding around in them more than was helpful for proper ski form. Overall, though, I really feel that I made progress during the lesson, and when we went down the same blue piste from the morning, it was really so much better.

The piste on Saturday.

Lilli and Jan.

After the lesson, we went up and down by ourselves a few more times before going to aprés-ski at the restaurant near our hut. We enjoyed a beautiful sunset, had a beer, and played a typical aprés-ski game that involved competitive hammering of nails into a tree stump. It definitely required a lot of hand-eye coordination, which I am apparently lacking.

Sunset on Saturday.

After, we had a nice dinner at our hut and sat around and chatted until we all couldn't stop yawning (which was approximately at 9.30 pm). All that fresh air just does a number on you!

This was my first time sleeping in a mountain hut, and it definitely was an experience. Basically, I was in a room with eight other people, with all of us sort of in one giant, connected bunk bed. We were four across on the bottom and four across on the top (see picture from website below). The mattresses were definitely not large, and any time someone moved you could feel it. It definitely takes a relationship with colleagues to a whole new level when you sleep cheek to cheek with them... I was just happy that I was zipped up in the sleeping bag so that I couldn't flail in the middle of the night and hit someone.

**Photo from here.

On Sunday morning we woke up to a steady snow. In some ways, this made skiing more difficult, because you actually couldn't see that much, especially in the higher bits where the fog rolled in, so figuring out where the piste was going was a challenge. But the fresh, powdery snow was really nice to ski in and nicer to fall down in, and there were not so many people skiing. I actually had quite a bit more fun skiing on Sunday than on Saturday, simply because I wasn't so nervous about all of the other people skiing around me, I felt that the snow was nicer, and I finally started to feel the rhythm of it.

The piste on Sunday.

I feel like I turned a corner with skiing this weekend. I am no longer afraid for my life the whole time I am skiing, only some of time, and I can imagine a time when skiing will actually be fun and not just terrifying and difficult. I've even decided to look for skis at the end of the season, to see if I can find some on sale.

After skiing, we traveled back to Zurich together, and I was so happy to sleep in my own bed! I'm actually not as sore from two days of skiing as I thought I would be, so I am pretty pleased that I had gone skiing a few times before to get used to it. It was  really quite a fun weekend, and I really enjoyed going with such a large group of people- hanging out with old friends and making new ones.

Ski weekend in Elm.

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This weekend I went on a ski trip with my colleagues in Elm. Yesterday was totally perfect- and I have the sunburn to prove it!

Sent from my iPhone

Skiing at Hoch-Ybrig.

Yesterday I went skiing at Hoch-Ybrig with Lilli, one of my colleagues who I also went to ski school with. We chose Hoch-Ybrig because it is quite close to Zurich (less than 1.5 hours by train) and it had a good number of blue pisten. (The system here is blue=easiest, red=middle, and black=hard.) We wanted to get a little more practice before our big ski weekend next week, especially because we didn't have a lot of time on the actual piste during ski school.

We got up bright and early, and were at the lift station by 9.30. I have to say that it is nice not to have to travel on the trains with skiing gear. Pretty much everyone else on the train was wrangling skis or snowboards, poles, boots (or wearing the boots, which is even worse to me- it is so hard to walk in those things!), helmet, and a backpack. I was happy to only have my backpack and helmet to worry about, although I have to say that, once again, Swiss public transportation is fantastic. The trains all have ski racks in the winter (which are replaced with bike racks in the summer), and the buses have pull-behind trailers for the skis and snowboards. Amazing!

We rented our skis and such, and then hit the slopes. By the way, we are in the middle of a cold snap, so it was about 8 F and windy on the mountain. (As in so cold that my water bottle froze and my iPhone literally froze and wouldn't work until it warmed up...) We were absolutely freezing going up the chair lift! Also, it was our first time really on a chair lift, so that was exciting. I think we definitely provided some amusement for the more experienced guests.

We survived our first run, which was a feat of no small proportions. It was really steep, and definitely much more intense than the blue piste that we experienced at Laax. When we were skiing at Laax, we had time to think about turning and slowing down and form, while as at Hoch-Ybrig I just tried to stay alive and in quasi-control, with more or less success. I really felt like I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, although I did stay on my skis.

Lilli at the top before the first run.

After a few times up and down, we decided to go up a different chair lift and get a coffee at the top to warm up, because we were basically numb. Unfortunately, we got on the wrong lift and ended up at a top with red pisten as our only option. Yikes!

At the top, we saw a skier dressed up like a tschäggättä (my best guess, based on some internet research, although he also looked a little like a creature from Fraggle Rock), which is a carnival-related phenomenon. From what I can understand, he wanders around at carnival and throws soot on people. So, this person was on skis and dressed in head-to-toe fur and with a full-head mask, and instead of poles he carried some sort of fir switch. And instead of sooting people he skied up and down the hill powdering people and shaking a cowbell. Oh, Switzerland. Sometimes you are so strange!

We fortified ourselves with warm drinks and recovered feeling in our toes before tackling the red slope, which, I am happy to say, we did with more or less success. Although I was quite happy to avoid that hill for the rest of the time. With that traumatic episode out of the way, we got on the correct chair lift to Spiristock and had lunch at the top.

Warm drinkies!

About to tackle the red piste!

We really only got brief glimpses of the mountains around, as it was quite foggy at the start and got worse as the day progressed, sometimes even snowing a little bit. This made it hard to see follow the piste (thank goodness for those neon orange stakes that tell you when you're about to go off-piste), but the snow was really powdery and quite nice, I think.

After lunch, we went down a new blue run, and this one was more our speed. It was longer and not quite so steep or busy, so we could practice what we had learned in ski school under a little more control. The steepest part of this run was at the very bottom right under the chair lift, at which point I was mostly going really fast and rocking the largest snowplow that has (possibly) ever been seen. I am pretty sure that people were wondering what on earth I thought I was doing, but I did stay alive!

We both enjoyed the afternoon run a lot more, as it was calmer and a little warmer and we weren't afraid of dying at every minute. We left around 16.00 to head back to Zurich and were home by dinner time. I love how easy it is to spend a day in the mountains! And I am also thankful to have a skiing buddy that is at the same level. It just makes things so much nicer to have company!

Based on this experience I have come to several conclusions. First, I really need to take some more skiing lessons, which, thankfully, we already have planned for the upcoming ski weekend. Second, skiing when it is really cold is a challenge. And third, skiing must get more fun when you're better at it and not in fear for your life all the time (at least I hope so), so I need to keep at it, I think.

**Some photos courtesy of Lilli's iPhone.