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Sölden, Austria: Early Season Ski Report - November 2007
A holiday gathering with relatives in Munich allowed me one day to give Eliza the consummate European Alpine experience – that is, as consummate as could be achieved, firstly, within a reasonable day-trip drive from Munich; and, secondly, in late November. Not being overly interested in après-ski and Gemütlichkeit, we set as our criteria fast terrain, lots of vertical, and the best early-season snow possible.Monday, November 26th was our day. While there were some open options closer to Munich, we opted, at Ultimate-Ski's recommendation, to make the longer jaunt down to Sölden, and are glad we did. Yes, there was some self-interest at work, as well: Although I lived near Salzburg as a child, I had never skied in the Alps and was eager to be initiated.
Before giving the run down of our excellent outing, let me get the one "con" out of the way: We knew already that only roughly a third of the terrain was open, so there was no disappointment in that respect. But prior to our pre-dawn departure from Munich, I checked the resort's website for any critical updates that might have caused us to re-route to Garmisch or Kitzsteinhorn. My understanding from the site was that the Rettenbach glacier was open, so we took our pilgrimage to the Autobahn.
When we arrived a few hours later, however, we found that glacier access was closed due to high winds. Whether this was my misunderstanding of the website, an error on the Sölden webmaster's part, or a true opening-time decision, I'll never know, but we were sad to have missed out on the glacier – if not for the terrain itself (we skied plenty of good stuff), at least for the novelty of it. But of course that gives us just one more reason to get back there asap.!
You're likely to hear that the town itself lacks some of the charm one might expect in Tirol. In our limited experience, this is true – emphasized to us when we flipped a U-turn in front of one of the town’s charming strip clubs. However, the drive up the Ötztal from the E60/A12 presents a postcard at every bend of the road.
It took all of twelve minutes to make it from the (free) parking lot, through the ticket office, and onto the Giggijoch gondola that ascends to the 2,284m mid-mountain base. Of the handful of lifts that were open and accessible, we did our skiing from two of them: Langegg (Lift 13) and Silberbrünnl (Lift 18), on neither of which we encountered any lines after our very first run of the morning.Silberbrünnl allowed us to take a few warm-up runs on a pristine expressway of a blue groomer (13) with 378m/1240ft of vertical. The rest of our day was spent on, off and among the reds (11 & 18) and blacks (17, and some “create-your-own-blacks” on the Rettenbach Tal side below 11, to which we felt irresistibly drawn despite suspicion that it was, well, technically not part of the official terrain) accessed by Langegg. The inclines of these undulating trails ranged from forgiving to that of a fairly aggressive GS course, down what I’ll estimate at about 800m/2600ft of vertical drop.
It had snowed the weekend before our visit, and continued to snow lightly for most of the day, which made for outstanding conditions underski. The entire day was on packed and lightly-skied powder, as well as some knee-deep virgin fluff once we ventured off-piste toward the Rettenbach Tal from the Langegg runs. I found the powder to be not among the lightest I’d skied in – understandably, for the early season – but definitely not damp or heavy.
It was also from the Langegg lift that we were best able to look across the austere Rettenbach Tal toward the glaciers. While our views of the peaks were limited by the low clouds, there were enough breaks now and then to soak in the vision of this vast resort. Lifts extended up mountainsides everywhere we looked; beckoning. Oh, to be here in February…
Eager to make the most of our pilgrimage, we chose to forego the gondola ride back to town at day’s end, and instead shot 934m/3064ft down the black run (20, which becomes 22) that begins at the base of the Silberbrünnl lift, snakes through trees, past sheds and chalets, and ends up in the parking lot next to the Intersport, about 50m from where we had parked. The exhilarating trail, which tried our edges and tired legs with the ice we hit below the day’s snowline about 2/3 of the way down, added an exhilarating exclamation point to our adventure.
A few novelties for these Wasatch Range natives from Utah:
• Bubbles covering the lifts, which kept us toasty and wind-immune, especially appreciated on Langegg later in the day. Are these standard fare in the Alps? And why can’t we have them here in the Colonies?
• The absence of human pass-readers, in favor of electronic card-reading turnstiles. It was like boarding the Metro, hands-free, complete with color-appropriate stop and go lights. My daughter was enthralled, locking up one of the readers at one point due to multiple, enthusiastic swipes of her sleeve. Again, is it only Utah that doesn’t have these? And is it a Skipasscheckers Guild thing?
• A group of locals lunching in the Rotkogljochhütte, swinging real steins from which sloshed real beer, while singing in a real dialect that I could scarcely decipher (but in commendable four-part harmony) to the accompaniment of a real guitar. Sheer bliss. I thought this stuff only happened in Austrian Tourism Bureau movies. Es lebet Kaiser Franz!
• Large groups of skiers, carving more or less in sync, and in matching Technicolor unis! Too good for ski school but not sharp enough to be high-level competitors or instructors-in-training, I surmised these to be ski clubs of some sort. In a day when I am acutely aware of the resounding success that my country’s president has had in re-establishing the persona of The Ugly American, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that these blurs of fuchsia and vermilion weaving their way down the slopes were…really cute.
Thank you Ultimate-Ski.com for the Sölden recommendation. We loved the place and will definitely be back at the earliest logistically- and financially-feasible opportunity! (I’ll put them on notice to have that Gletscher open.)
Aaron and Eliza Dalton
Provo, Utah USA
10 December 200
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