Skiing, Skinning and Festivities in Kleinwalsertal - AT 2006
Well this rumor circulated in the internet, that the biggest German Telemark Festival would be held again in Klein Walsertal. The only ironic thing is that, Kleinwalsertal is actually in Austria...
Well sadly my regular driver & car -combo did not work, as Mario had to run some errands. Luckily Mario's friend Werner was free, so atleast I had a back country partner. Sadly Werner did not have any avy-equipment of his own, so I ended up biking to Riswijk to borrow Mario's avy-gear for Werner and have some lunch at the same time.
So come friday, and I set of for the Delft train-station... Sadly the flat had run out of coffee, so I had a hard time getting the engine running. After a few train changes I was at Cologne and met with Werner. After stuffing my gear in the Golf we were ready to hit the road, NOT. Werner had misplaced the note which had the info for our hotel/hostel, so off to his flat to figure out where we were going to stay. Sadly the reservation was made on phone, so no trace of it was found. After some PI work, we finally figured out the correct hostel and were back on the road.
The driving went quite well, only two road maintanence works and one accident slowed us down.
As the clock was against us and we knew that the Kleinwalsertal is not that big place, we desided to stop at Ulm and have something to eat. That turned out to be an excelent idea, as we found a nice and small brewery-restaurant that served big taste dishes and great beer. After refueling ourselves it was back to the road and after some small routefinding we finally arrived at our hostel in Mittelberg.
After talking with the inn-keeper, we unpacked and disided to hit the friday's part of the festival. I also wrote a few SMS to the local TTipster Johannes, but sadly no contact was made as it was a bit crowded at the party.
On sat morning we headed for the slopes and I registered for the festival, Werner didn't as he was skiing with training heels. So we headed up from Riezlern with Kanzelwandbahn and skied a few runs on the bumby offpiste snow near Zweiländer-Sesselbahn. The conditions were more or less like usual spring-snow, with hard stuff on north-westernly aspects. After some runs, we desided to hike up to one of the nearest peaks and actually managed to get to the top of Kanzelwand, and it didn't take too long. The run down was on at a north-eastern aspect, so the snow was actually really good, almost pow. Sadly the exit-trail wasn't that much fun, you even had some slight uphill on it, bummer.
Anyway, after that we had some lunch at the bottom of Fellhornbahn, before heading up again. At the top station of Fellhorn, we went our seperate ways as I wanted to use my fest-ticket for something and Werner wanted to ski. So I headed towards the G3-test tent and took for testing the 182 Ticket, the binders had the new G3 wedge on 'em. I can tell you that those skis absolutely rocked, I was skiing them at Mach Looney on groomers and blasting 100 Mph on the same bumbs I wasn't enjoying that much with my Stormrider DP's in the morning.
I ended up running quite a few laps on those Ticket's before switching back to my own skis, I managed to to a few runs on the same bumbs with my heavy and big skis and could really tell the difference. After getting bored on the hard bumbs, I moved to the sunny side. Well there were also bumby, but they were soft, so I had many great runs under Zwerenalplift on soft spring bumbs. Then I finally skied down the Kanzelwandbahn.
In the evening there was another party, and we made the right choice of eating there before the party started, the food was good and cheap. Sadly the service sucked, as quite a few others had the same idea and the restaurant was utterly understaffed...
On sunday we desided to ski on the "local" lift-system out of Mittelberg, so up we went with the Walmendinger Hornbahn. We ran a few groomers to warm up the legs, before hiking to the ridge between Muttelbergkopf and Walmendinger Horn and skiing on perfect powder to the backside. As Werner wanted to skin, we skinned up to the col just north of Muttelbergkopf. The snow was perfect pow the whole way up, and the otherside was good spring snow. After a long break and a lot of pondering the pow won, and back to the side we came from we skied. We got some great turns in champagne pow and most of 'em in uncut bliss.
Then we followed the trail to Ifen -skiarea and only had to hike for a couple of hundret of meters. Luckily the Ifen-area was also covered by our lift-ticket, so we skied the rest of the day there, we even managed to hike to the top of Hahnenköpfle. At the end of the day we took the shuttle back to Riezlern and had a few beers next to the town square before taking the bus to Mittelberg.
We also had dinner at the same place as last night, but now the service was much better, mebbe 'cause there was only a few customers... On monday we packed the car and drove to Obersdorf to ski on the Nebelhornbahn-area. Ended up running quite a few laps with the upperlifts, the offpiste-snow was mostly crap as all the lines in that area are more or less on the southernly aspects. Still we had a great time lapping Mach Looney runs on hero-snow at the groomers before skiing the the long run back to the car, the last 200 meters were utter slush and really sticky. Then it was time to change into civilian clothes and start the long drive back.
By some miracle I managed to catch the 21.25 train and didn't need to sleep at Cologne. Oh, and there was one big traffic-jam caused by two burning cars... Anyway, go home to Delft a little after 1 o'clock in the night.
Mental note, skiing with Werner is fun, but blody hard work... The guy is a machine even though he's roughly 50 years old... Then again, what do you expect from a guy who runs numerous ultra-marathons a year.
Photos to come, and more when Werner gets back and sends me his pics...
Well sadly my regular driver & car -combo did not work, as Mario had to run some errands. Luckily Mario's friend Werner was free, so atleast I had a back country partner. Sadly Werner did not have any avy-equipment of his own, so I ended up biking to Riswijk to borrow Mario's avy-gear for Werner and have some lunch at the same time.
So come friday, and I set of for the Delft train-station... Sadly the flat had run out of coffee, so I had a hard time getting the engine running. After a few train changes I was at Cologne and met with Werner. After stuffing my gear in the Golf we were ready to hit the road, NOT. Werner had misplaced the note which had the info for our hotel/hostel, so off to his flat to figure out where we were going to stay. Sadly the reservation was made on phone, so no trace of it was found. After some PI work, we finally figured out the correct hostel and were back on the road.
The driving went quite well, only two road maintanence works and one accident slowed us down.
As the clock was against us and we knew that the Kleinwalsertal is not that big place, we desided to stop at Ulm and have something to eat. That turned out to be an excelent idea, as we found a nice and small brewery-restaurant that served big taste dishes and great beer. After refueling ourselves it was back to the road and after some small routefinding we finally arrived at our hostel in Mittelberg.
After talking with the inn-keeper, we unpacked and disided to hit the friday's part of the festival. I also wrote a few SMS to the local TTipster Johannes, but sadly no contact was made as it was a bit crowded at the party.
On sat morning we headed for the slopes and I registered for the festival, Werner didn't as he was skiing with training heels. So we headed up from Riezlern with Kanzelwandbahn and skied a few runs on the bumby offpiste snow near Zweiländer-Sesselbahn. The conditions were more or less like usual spring-snow, with hard stuff on north-westernly aspects. After some runs, we desided to hike up to one of the nearest peaks and actually managed to get to the top of Kanzelwand, and it didn't take too long. The run down was on at a north-eastern aspect, so the snow was actually really good, almost pow. Sadly the exit-trail wasn't that much fun, you even had some slight uphill on it, bummer.
Anyway, after that we had some lunch at the bottom of Fellhornbahn, before heading up again. At the top station of Fellhorn, we went our seperate ways as I wanted to use my fest-ticket for something and Werner wanted to ski. So I headed towards the G3-test tent and took for testing the 182 Ticket, the binders had the new G3 wedge on 'em. I can tell you that those skis absolutely rocked, I was skiing them at Mach Looney on groomers and blasting 100 Mph on the same bumbs I wasn't enjoying that much with my Stormrider DP's in the morning.
I ended up running quite a few laps on those Ticket's before switching back to my own skis, I managed to to a few runs on the same bumbs with my heavy and big skis and could really tell the difference. After getting bored on the hard bumbs, I moved to the sunny side. Well there were also bumby, but they were soft, so I had many great runs under Zwerenalplift on soft spring bumbs. Then I finally skied down the Kanzelwandbahn.
In the evening there was another party, and we made the right choice of eating there before the party started, the food was good and cheap. Sadly the service sucked, as quite a few others had the same idea and the restaurant was utterly understaffed...
On sunday we desided to ski on the "local" lift-system out of Mittelberg, so up we went with the Walmendinger Hornbahn. We ran a few groomers to warm up the legs, before hiking to the ridge between Muttelbergkopf and Walmendinger Horn and skiing on perfect powder to the backside. As Werner wanted to skin, we skinned up to the col just north of Muttelbergkopf. The snow was perfect pow the whole way up, and the otherside was good spring snow. After a long break and a lot of pondering the pow won, and back to the side we came from we skied. We got some great turns in champagne pow and most of 'em in uncut bliss.
Then we followed the trail to Ifen -skiarea and only had to hike for a couple of hundret of meters. Luckily the Ifen-area was also covered by our lift-ticket, so we skied the rest of the day there, we even managed to hike to the top of Hahnenköpfle. At the end of the day we took the shuttle back to Riezlern and had a few beers next to the town square before taking the bus to Mittelberg.
We also had dinner at the same place as last night, but now the service was much better, mebbe 'cause there was only a few customers... On monday we packed the car and drove to Obersdorf to ski on the Nebelhornbahn-area. Ended up running quite a few laps with the upperlifts, the offpiste-snow was mostly crap as all the lines in that area are more or less on the southernly aspects. Still we had a great time lapping Mach Looney runs on hero-snow at the groomers before skiing the the long run back to the car, the last 200 meters were utter slush and really sticky. Then it was time to change into civilian clothes and start the long drive back.
By some miracle I managed to catch the 21.25 train and didn't need to sleep at Cologne. Oh, and there was one big traffic-jam caused by two burning cars... Anyway, go home to Delft a little after 1 o'clock in the night.
Mental note, skiing with Werner is fun, but blody hard work... The guy is a machine even though he's roughly 50 years old... Then again, what do you expect from a guy who runs numerous ultra-marathons a year.
Photos to come, and more when Werner gets back and sends me his pics...
posted by Henkka at 13:31
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