Group Trip(s) to Kaprun - 21st and 28th January 2017

Thanks for the good wishes Baldie, hope your trip goes well too and everyone comes back safe and well. 20 hours till my departure, really looking forward to it now!

Adders, will try to get some posted, but for some reason I keep forgetting to stop and actually take any pictures in the last few years. I am wondering if it is an age thing! :o

Bad luck (or not!) Stu28, the 6th is when our two and second weekers all come home, so you will miss us all. Have a good time though.

Well I am in the UK still but as this is an odd two weeker I thought an update may be needed.
The first cohort seems to be in the resort - well actually clogging up the hotel bar - and all is well.
May have made an error with this hotel as the general view seems to be "gosh! Bit nice this".
But hey - ho.
Anyway; I do hope they remember to go skiing tomorrow.......

I thought it was about time I wrote something about this group trip. I went for 2 weeks and I didn't get home until Sunday and I've been too busy to say anything about it before. Old Andy organized it all, and so far as I know everything ran very smoothly and we all had a great time :)

The quality of the hotel was very impressive, and it was by far the best hotel we've stayed in during these group holidays. It had a swimming pool and spa and delicious 6 course meals every night that took about 2 hours to eat. And the bedrooms were large and very comfortable.

It was an unusual group holiday because it spanned 2 weeks. It's the first time we've tried doing that. It worked out very well. I think there were 11 of us there the first week, and 14 for the second week. As I was there for both weeks it meant I got more time to talk to people in the group.

I skied Zell am See and Kaprun about 13 years ago, so I already knew something about the layout of the 2 villages/towns, and the way they're linked by ski buses to the glacier. Kaprun is sort of in the middle between the ski areas of Zell and the glacier (on the Kitzsteinhorn).

What I didn't know, however, is that Kaprun also has it's own ski area, apart from the nursery slopes at the back of our hotel (the Tauernhof hotel). It's called the Maiskogel and although it's only got a few pistes it's a brilliant ski area, with around 6 lovely mountain restaurants on it, and I think it was my favourite part of the entire ski area. It's right in the centre of Kaprun, only around a 5 minute walk from the hotel, and it's got a steep black section as well as blues and reds, and it's perfect for ski lessons and slalom training. You can't get lost on it as it's only got 2 chairlifts, the pistes are always very well groomed, and I never saw it crowded. I should think most holidaymakers don't even know it exists. From what I could see the only people on it were locals training, or with their families on Saturday, and the Kaprun ski schools. The apres ski at the Lederhosen bar is supposed to be the best in Kaprun.



I skied the first 5 days of the holiday with 2 members of our group with the Ski Club of GB, led very ably by Liam and assisted by Nikki. Liam took us around the whole ski area (except the Maiskogel) at a pretty fast rate, and didn't seem to mind that we skied all 5 days with him. They tailor the speed and difficulty of the day to suit the members who join them, and because they had 2 'Leaders' they divided the group so that anyone that wanted to ski the harder 'x' routes could do so. The x routes are unpisted but avalanche controlled areas close to the piste (itinerary routes). I was surprised at how many of these there are in Zell and on the Kitzsteinhorn (glacier). One member of the group skied down these, but I stayed on the piste!

Liam and Nikki also took us for a day out to Maria Alm, which is a lesser known resort close to Zell, going by car (all we paid was a few euros to contribute to the petrol cost), and the snow there was in great condition - I could hear it 'squeeking' under my boots when I got out of the car. They also took us around Saalbach and down to Leogang on a day trip jointly organized with Crystal (cost 20 euros for the coach). As far as I remember it was on the Leogang trip that we came across some amazing toilets in a couple of the restaurants - Austria seems to be way ahead of France when it comes to toilets! ;)

(photo courtesy of a SCGB member who was ski-ing with us)

And on the first Friday 4 of us went on a taxi trip to Mittersill, organized by Billip1, so that we could ski the Kitzbuhel area. There seemed to be a great number of well groomed tree lined pistes here. In fact, we enjoyed it so much that a different group of 4 of us returned the following Friday to ski it again. We arranged for the taxi to pick us up from Jochberg and we all had a great time (taxi cost 130 euros return).

I bought the Salzburg Super Ski lift pass on the first morning, which covers an enormous area including 2,700 Km pistes. It only cost me 19 euros more than the normal lift pass for Zell and the glacier, for 13 days, and it meant I could ski all these other ski areas. It requires a photo, but the lift office staff arrange this.

On the Saturday changeover day I skied the Maiskogel with one of the group who was flying back later that day (George1), and we practised ski school routines ready for my lessons on Sunday. I was in ski school for 5 days, with the Schermer school, based in Kaprun, taught by a very patient Romanian instructor nick-named Pelle. There were only 4 of us in the class (none from my group except for myself) for most of the time and he took us on red and black pistes in Zell and on the glacier, as well as on the Maiskogel, and did his best to help us all to improve.

I like ski school because the instructors always know where the best conditions are for each day, and find us interesting restaurants, and occasionally they actually manage to teach me something (unfortunately I am a very difficult pupil!). Pelle also took us off piste on a small bit of one of the itinerary routes on the glacier (I fell over several times), and then surprised me by telling us that we were all expected to take part in the timed slalom race on Thursday (in which I came last in my class but did at least beat the fastest time of the class below us).

Pelle took us to the Pinzgauer Hutte mountain restaurant in Zell for lunch on Wednesday, the only day it snowed (the rest of the time we had brilliant sunshine and blue skies) and the restaurant give everyone a tow back to the piste (because it's uphill). This is a still taken from a video made by someone in my ski lesson. He very kindly sent it to me. It was marvellous fun, and none of us let go or fell over during the tow!



My major achievement after 5 days of lessons is that I can now do the 360 correctly! Unfortunately I still resemble something like a camel on ice when I ski - with my skis too far apart and my upper body all bent the wrong way, but I can at least now do this, thanks to Pelle :)

I used the train on the way back to get from Zell to Salzburg airport - travelling with CatP. We took a taxi to get from the hotel to Zell am See station, then the train, and I got the public tram from Salzburg railway station to the airport (line 2 goes from outside the station and takes around 20 minutes - cost 17 euros for a combined ticket for the train and tram). The train takes around an hour and a half.

We are still sorting out photos within the group. Here is one of Far Queue at the top of the glacier:

I did my best to join you, and had discussions with Old Andy. However, in the end, it wo.
uld have been such a short time, late Saturday evening until lunchtime Sunday, I decided it didn't make sense.

Another time

That would have been nice, Dave Mac, if you'd had time to join us for a day. But still, as you said, there's always another time!

I was really surprised at the change in the ski area since last time I was there. It seems that a massive amount of money has been invested. Small log cabin type mountain restaurants with wood fires have been replaced by enormous palatial places with automatic glass doors and dyson air blades in the toilets etc. But at least the food they provide is generally at a reasonable price! And there are now lots of extra tourist attractions, which I don't remember seeing last time (unless I just didn't notice them of course).

There's the Ice Camp up on the glacier, for example, with a frozen artificial ice forest, ice bar, and audi car in it!

(Far Queue's photos)





There also seems to have been some clever marketing, like for example, with the 'Black Mamba' piste on the glacier. It's a black piste, number 14, which is advertised as being up to 63% steep, 1,000m long, and curving around the mountain like a snake. You can even buy Black Mamba T-shirts! We went down it in my ski lesson and I didn't even realize what it was until afterwards when the others were talking about it. Yes, I do remember one steep,curved, narrow section that I went down very carefully, but the rest of it was unremarkable.

And there's a museum on the glacier as well, where you can hear the sounds of the glacier.

Zell am See has several apres ski bars, all over the slopes, where you can hear live music. We were up the top of the Schmittenhohe with the SCGB at the end of the day and they were singing that swimming, flying etc. song and everyone was trying to do the actions and a few people were dancing on the tables. If you haven't heard the song before it's on Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=57&v=MKGjkCFeLE0

We didn't stay late because we had to ski down the mountain to the bottom of the Areitbahn 1 where the ski bus stop is, in Schuttdorf, to get back to our hotel in Kaprun. There's another apres ski bar there as well, one of the umbrella bar types, and they had live music too.

They are also building a link to Saalbach from Zell am See. The 10 person cable car, Zellamseexpress, is already in operation, complete with juke box gondolas and free WLAN.

You can ski down red 21 and back up this, or ski down the itinerary route x4 to the road that goes to Saalbach, and get the bus from there. We didn't try this, but someone was telling us about it. I think they hope to have the link finished for next season. It will make a very large ski area once it's completed.

I suppose I should add a few words.........
It was a jolly successful ski trip :)

Daved's photos of ski-ing on the glacier.





Using the buses to and from the glacier wasn't quite as simple as you might think. The bus drivers sometimes didn't bother to change the boards so that they said 'Kitzsteinhorn' whichever way they were going, and I got on a bus (the K2 instead of the K1) which, according to the winter bus time-table I had, said it was going to stop outside our hotel. But the others realized it wasn't going to stop there and jumped off and then started panicking about the fact that I was on the wrong bus! However, I checked it was going to Kaprun, and not Vienna, and had a very nice excursion to the castle and ended up having to walk about 400 yards to the hotel.

Rumour had it that I'd managed to persuade the bus driver to change the route just so that I could get back to the hotel only shortly after the others! ;)

Afterwards I had a more careful inspection of the winter bus time-table and there was a bit in tiny writing that said it didn't go to our hotel during certain months which included the time we were there!

I was talking to the Crystal rep about it and she said she'd got on the wrong bus several times, and my ski instructor told us to be careful getting the 660 back from the glacier because sometimes it goes straight to Zell am See and bypasses Kaprun.