Skiing in Zell am See

Due to a generous workplace, I received some extra time off and some money to spend. Fabian and I are keen to improve our skiing, so we head off to Austria! Our first trip was to Norway, which we enjoyed, but we wanted to try the Alps - everyone says they are so dramatic. And, they were right.

Just before leaving I tell friends I am heading to Zell am See, a pretty winter and summer resort in Austria. I get told of a horrible fire in a funicular (underground train) where hundreds of skiers died. Great. We’re gonna die on our trip.

Fortunately, we don’t. In fact, we don’t even go to the Kaprun resort, which contains a glacier you can ski on even in summer. We stick around Zell am See itself, which is a beautiful Austrian village in the Alps. It has more than enough skiing for us.

It’s a tour we’re on, of course. They are the only way to ski out of Britian, really, unless you fancy driving to the French ski fields. (People do - including my old boss - drove back overnight, straight to the office… I couldn’t do it!!). So after the normal kerfuffle at the airport, finding the right bus, all the people, etc, we are heading off to the resort. Arriving in Zell itself is a bit strange - there is no snow! In Norway there was no doubt about the season with about 2 feet of snow everywhere. But here there is no snow at the level of the village. It’s looking pretty cloudy, though, so it seems that we might be lucky for snow.

We are aware that it has been a bad winter in Europe for snow. A friend who lives in Italy told us mournfully that he can normally get up to the skifields near his Milan home “five or six times a season” but so far, nothing! So we are crossing our fingers on this trip.

We explore the village. The buildings are lovely in that Alpine way, big A-frame houses, and very colourful in the village, even though the geraniums aren’t out. We order a beer, sitting outside at a local pub - it’s really that mild! Compared to the -10 C, -20 C of Norway this is idyllic.

We pick up our skis at the ski shop. As usual this is a real exercise. My shoes turn out to be too big, and I take them back two days later, but the guys in the shop were good and it was easy to do.

The next day - Ski School! We get a few runs in on the nursery slope before the instructors heards everyone together and makese us ski down a gentle slope between slalom poles. I concentrate hard. It is fun! Fabian and I are put in the beginner class, which disappoints me momentarily. Being from England I count my skiing experience in terms of weeks (one week already!) but of course everybody else counts in terms of actual skill. I laughed at myself later. But of course the best thing is we are together, in a nice group, with a good instructor.

Christine tells us she is from Wales, and she makes lots of self-deprecating remarks, apparently to try and get the “Welsh skier?!” jokes out of the way early. It turns out she has been coming to Zell since a little girl, loves it with a passion, and qualified as an Austrian ski instructor, “the best in the world” (and certainly lots better than that other country, France). This is tongue in cheek by the way for any French reading this.

(She was certainly an accomplished skier and I was impressed over the week how she could ratchet up her skiing. When necessary, she could ski slowly, like us, only with perfect control. But ocassionally we would spot her skiing naturally, and she swished across the snow like a pro!) It feels good to be in good hands.

We stay down on the nursery slopes the first day, as there is a storm up the mountain. It is snowing heavily, which is always fun at first. It bodes well for the rest of our week! We practice turns down the gentle slope and I learn a lot. A change for us from Norway is that this course is a full day course (10-12, and 2-4). It’s almost like an escorted day on the snow. We eat together at a little restaurant, a few hundred metres away from the lifts, down a little tree-lined lane. We ski there! I am pretty chuffed at actually travelling somewhere on skis.

During lunch we get to know the group. A mixture, but with a large contingent of Irish ladies, most of whom have been skiing several times but never really get out of the beginner class . For the first time it dawns on me that there are other ways of enjoying skiing without continual improvement ending in black-slope ability. Oh. You can go skiing with your partner, and/or friends, have lots of fun in the beginner courses and let aggressive hubby go off in a different course. And you can do this year after year and have a lot of laughs. It’s an eye-opener! And the Irish ladies were some of the best people to be with in the group.

An interesting thing happens. There is one handsome boy in our group, looks around 24,25. He has a girlfriend, as we all saw her go off to the total beginner class. But the instructor takes it upon herself to belittle him and put him down. She also talks a lot about her husband (earlier she had actually pointed him out). I was puzzled but Fabian suggested later it was group dynamic thing. She is sick of men hitting on her, he theorises. She makes a big deal of being married, and if it looks like there is a smart mouthed person in the group she comes down on them like a tonne of bricks. Interesting theory.

Dinner is at the hotel, which turns out to be pleasant but not too exciting. It’s a good idea though because skiing is so tiring. We’re not big ragers on the ski field, preferring to collapse in bed at the end of the day. And dinner in the hotel is served at 6:30pm. Some nights, we were waiting impatiently for it!

The next day we go up the mountain. Zell has some top-class gondolas, and we are whizzed up the top in about 7 minutes in a large cable car. The view is fantastic! But it doesn’t last long as we disappear into cloud. Yes, some of yesterday’s bad weather is hanging around. Not to worry. We emerge from the hut at the top of the mountain, into what looks like, my God, a cafe! Up here! How naive am I. It’s deserted now, but over the next few (sunny) days this pub will be playing loud music and hosting loads of revellers. I will discover that some partners come on the holiday but don’t even ski, just cabling to the top of the mountain each day, drinking, and going down!

Now picture this. A group full of skiers. All felt very confident before the trip but the first day reminds everyone they are not king of the snow. And, there is a white out. You can’t see more than about 3 metres. You can’t see the edge. And you know there is an edge around somewhere. Occasionally you see red nylon netting. What if you get too close? What if you fall into the netting? Will you keep going, going, off, off the mountain, splat onto Zell am See??

(I should point out here that these are my concerns, and mine only, Fabian is having a ball and sails completely unconcerned down the slopes :-).

We follow the instructor in slow “esses” down the slope, like ducklings behind their mother. Finally we are down! Yes! A hundred metres below the top the fog clears a little and we can see more. Wow! We did it! We are all chuffed by our brilliance.

Nothing that day is hard after that. We practice more turns, fall, laughed. Get annoyed. Get over it. Get cold. Have lunch! A big difference between Norway and Austria is the sheer size of the resort. Zell has probably 15 - 20 mountain restaurants. The one we visit today is an enormous cafeteria that can seat hundreds. Over the course of the week we’ll try them all, and really enjoy the variety and quality of the food.

We enjoy our week enormously. We investigate some bars on the nights we are not too tired, and have a drink or two (until a raging 8pm!). We enjoy the group, and watching our skiing improve. As the week progreses we both get a lot more comfortable on the skis. We finally learn the hockey stop! There is a magnificent wide run through the trees, which ends in a lovely, shallow slope. This is an excellent place to practice hockey stops (sudden stops where you “lift” yourself off the snow and twist. They are extremely impressive as you stop dead, and every Norweigan above the age of 4 did them expertly.)

The weather also proves itself, with a good snow on the first day followed by 5 sunny days. The views from the top of the moutains are fantastic, and the weather mild enough to sit outside at the mountain restaurants. It’s a very carefree existence.

My desire to improve is also pandered to, as one day the instructor casually tells us that the slope we just came down was a red slope! Wow! I had noticed it was a bit harder work, but I hadn’t fallen. It was quite easy actually! The next day we went on some more red slopes. They remain hard work, but mostly, I can manage them. I am thriled with my progress.

One day I “burn out” my left leg. We return to the top of the mountain (Schmittenhohe) for lunch. Unbeknownst to me the only way down is by an icy road. Roads, I discover, suck. They have a uniform steepness, with no natural undulations were you can stop, and are so narrow that they quickly get icy with use. I am going faster than I feel comfortable with (there is an edge involved) so I try to snow plough. Ugh. For various reasons, ignorance being a key one, I don’t weight equally on both legs, but lean more heavily on my left. I feel I can’t stop, but just have to get to the bottom. When after six or seven tortuous minutes we reach the open slopes, I can only turn on one leg. The overused leg just won’t turn and I fall down three, four, five times trying to. I meet the group at the bottom of the lift and sit down. I realise I have got so much lactic acid in my leg that it is useless. I’m frustrated, but there is only one thing to do - not move for about 25 minutes.

So I don’t. I sit immobile at the bottom of the lift nursing my exhausted leg. I am a bit annoyed, but not too much. Frankly, the pace at ski school can be hard (it’s never right for everyone!) and I enjoy the rest. I observe the other skiers. The general skill levels, I decide, are much less than Norway. Obviously more casual skiers here. The Norweigans, on the other hand, were unbelievable skiers. I couldn’t decide which I was more impressed by, the five year old who would ski over to me on a steep slope, stop, and offer me a hand up when I’d fallen, or the Mums and Dads who flew down the slopes, with junior stuck between their legs. I think Norway had less tourists reducing the average, too.

The rest of the class returns, and I get up. It’s amazing, my leg is back to normal (a bit tired as it’s the end of the day, but not useless). It had never happened to me before that I had burnt out a muscle.

The class has some cool news though - they are making a video! I join them up the top with the videographer. He makes me say my name and where we are from. Then, he videos me as I do certain turns down the slope. This is what the rest of the class just did. It includes ducking through a small dog-house shaped model (I managed it, but tall Fabian flips it up as he comes through :-), and jumping over a jump! It feels like such a high jump, but when I see it later on the video I see most of us were lucky to get more than five centimetres off the ground. But it was lots of fun to do something different on skis. We’ll watch the video on the last day.

The final day is again snowing and we go up a different side of the mountain, one with mostly red slopes. It is very quiet and peaceful though, as with the lack of blue slopes far less people visit it. It’s hard work because of the powdery snow. Our skis skate along about 2 centimetres under the snow, and sometimes dig in on the turn and it’s head over heels. Also the piste machine is out and about for an added frisson.

But it’s towards the end of the week, and I am tiring. At lunch I decide I’m not going to continue in the afternoon. I’m really tired, and my jacket is wet. It turns out my jacket is better at keeping me warm than keeping me dry. With a wet jacket, a nice afternoon changes in an instant.

So, with the better part of valour, and all that, I retire to the lower slopes. I have a couple of runs but I truly am knackered! I know the rest of the class will be coming down to do a little slalom race later, so I try to wait. I order a drink in the little cafe. But the cafe is full of Mums with babies, for some reason. I can only assume that nothing would stand between hubby and his skiing holiday! So I decide not to stay.

As it turns out this was a wise move. Fabian continiues to ski, but afterwards complains of knee pain that doesn’t go away. It turns out he has overdone it a bit, and awakened an old basketball injury. He continues to ski on the holiday but complains of knee pain for months afterward.

That night we have the video night This is hilarious. It’s in a bar in the village, which is absolutely packed when we turn up. It’s full of people in the classes, as it turns out, and we watch as various grades of classes go through the moves. Each class does different things - we went through the doghouse, but others spin around, do jumps, etc. The videos have been skillfully edited and are very humourous.

Finally there’s us! Wow. Seeing a little puffy jacket whizz by, a look of enormous concentration on its face. I crack up. Fabian’s attempts cause similar hilarity. As do the rest of our class, who variously did well and stuffed up at different times. We buy a copy of the video, and find it just as amusing at home later. We plan to go back and improve!

Our last day is free skiing, not with the class. We see several of them though which is nice. It’s pretty good weather and I am feeling chipper after my half rest day the day before. We take things nice and easy and enjoy our familiar blue runs. Lunch is at our favourite alpine restaurant. We look back on the holiday and know we would go back to Austria in an instant.

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