A major goal of mine this year was to spend at least a week skiing somewhere in the Alps. I brought my ski clothes with me from Canada, and I wasn't going to have them just collect dust in my closet. A friend of mine had arranged a trip to Val Thorens in France in December, but because of English teaching commitments I couldn't join him. I had also been talking about skiing with Andreas, a friend of mine from Düsseldorf studying in Köln. He was planning a trip with his brother Daniel, and three other friends, Sebastian, Astrid, and Andrea. They had room for me in the car and the apartment, which belongs to Andrea's parents. Of course I took the opportunity to join them as soon as it was there, and on March 26th we were all bound for Flims, a small ski resort town in the Swiss canton of Graubunden. The drive from Düsseldorf was about eight hours, but I only had to endure half of the trip as I was picked up in Karlsruhe along the way. The others were to stay for nine days of skiing; I was there for five as I had to work the next week. We settled in on a Sunday night, and I immediately found that I was in for a week of gourmet dining, as Sebastian is a very enthusiastic cook of simple but very delicious meals. Breakfasts and dinners were at the apartment, lunch was brought with us on the slopes. Here we are enjoying a lunch break I was really lucky to be skiing with Andreas and the others, not only did I have a place in an apartment for free, but I had a pair of skis belonging to Daniel to use, and some old boots from Sebastian. My only costs were food and my ski pass. This is good, because Switzerland is extremely expensive, and the pass alone was about $50 Cdn a day. The first full day of skiing was not without its small inconveniences. I brought the skiis and boots with me to the top of the mountain (in the gondola) to have them fitted. Once at the top we learned that the bindings could not be set wide enough to fit the boots, and that I would have to take everything back down the mountain into the town to have the bindings re-bored. Fortunately, this took less than an hour (I was worried it might take the whole day) and by noon I had met with the others again for lunch. I hadn't been skiing for over a year, so my first few runs were rather interesting. After a couple of slopes though I was in control again. The weather was quite mild all week, normally between about 2 and 9 degrees Celcius. This is nice but a bit warm for skiing, a few degrees below zero is best. The snow at the bottom of the mountain was a bit slushy and slow. That didn't really matter though, the snow at the top where we were skiing was normally very good. We had some cloudy or foggy conditions during the first few days (just sunshine in this shot though!). The boots I was using seemed fine for the first two days, but by the end of the third day my shins were in quite a lot of pain. I tried to ski with the same boots on the fourth day, but the pain got to the point where I could no longer enjoy myself, so I went back down into the town again to rent some other boots for the last few days. With the new boots I was able to ski again without any major problems. The fifth (and my last) day of skiing was a perfect, beautiful day which could not have been any better. All of the pictures on this page were taken on this day. The temperature was right, it was finally sunny and bright, and with the clear conditions all slopes were open, meaning we could ski all over the whole resort, including on the glacier. Most of the runs are between 2000 and 2500 metres. The glacier is at an elevation of 3000 metres. Here is a picture of the glacier (and Andreas). We enjoyed some incredible deep snow powder skiing on this day. Early in the morning we found a pure, untouched "off-piste" slope. It was a real challenge for me to get through the deep snow, but I always made it, although I needed a bit more time than some of the others. After skiing a deep powder slope we could find our own tracks as we took the lift back to the top. While on the lift we saw a wild snow hare climb up a vertical cliff and then scamper off along the snow. The powder slopes were the biggest thrill of the week for me. The wipe-outs on these runs were always very entertaining, as the skier usually found himself almost completely buried under about a metre of fresh powder. After one such fall I needed about ten minutes to find one of my skiis again. Unfortunately Daniel injured his foot at the bottom of such a slope and had to give up snowboarding for the rest of the trip (he went skiing instead). After skiing the glacier and the deep snow for a while we skied the longest slope we had found all week, which started off as a double-black-diamond slope, but was actually easier than the deep snow skiing. It took us forever to finally reach another lift as near the bottom there were a number of flat sections. Near the bottom we crossed a stream. Near the end of the last run of my last day of skiing I took a picture of the town of Flims. We had a great view of Flims at the end of each day, when we would ski down the entire mountain. After five days of fabulous skiing I was on my way again. On Sat April 1st I hitch-hiked from one end of Switzerland to the other, going from Flims all the way to Apples, a small francophone town near Lausanne. Back to the Main Page - Zurück zur Hauptseite