J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by ellistine

caron-a wrote:

Admin wrote:
What altitude is that?

if it's where I think it is (top of 27?) it's 3082m :D

how was the trip ellistine?

Yep. That's the one.

http://www.j2ski.com/ski-chat-forum/posts/list/5272.page#31821

I've had a couple of requests for a report on our Holiday last week so here goes.

This holiday and our previous one in St Anton were both to celebrate 40th Birthdays - not ours I'll hasten to add 8)

The celebration was really the only common thread between the two holidays. St Anton is a full on party town with skiing to match where as in Obergurgl things are throttled back some what.

Saturday morning saw us sat on the apron at Gatwick for an hour waiting for Innsbruck to reopen. We were litteraly taxiing to the runway when they shut the airport. It wasn't really a problem. They served us breakfast and then we were off.

We were staying in the hotel Alpenaussicht which is in the lower end of the town and fairly close to a one of the two main gondolla's. The town itself is pretty much entirely made up of fairly new looking hotels situated at either end of the main road. Obergurgl is at the end of the valley so traffic was fairly minimal.

The skiing area was quite small compared to St Anton and we managed to ski most of the Obergurgl routes on the first day. Having said that, most of the pistes are massively wide and some very undulating which allows you an almost infinite number of routes down a single piste. We spent virtually a whole day just on Red 17 finding new routes each time down.

I had imagined Obergurgl as being quite desolate due to the altitude but infact it also has some very nice slopes below the tree line. There's also some opportunity to find your own routes between the pistes and amongst the trees.

On day three we headed over to Hochgurgl on the gondolla and was met by an absoulutely massive sprawl of blue pistes. As I have a bit of a carving fettish I managed to really fall for the place. On the piste map it's a series of pistes but on the ground it's just one massive undulating playground. It has steep sections, flat sections, rollers, deep, everything. It's mostly supported with chair lifts but these move at a fair old lick so get you back up for your next run pretty quickly.
At the very top of the area is the Star bar which is just an amazing thing. Perched right on top of the mountain at just over 3000m it has views down the valley and then behind across Italy to the Dolomites. From there's it's a choice of a fairly easy black or a narrow blue to get back down to the main area. Skidaddle you'd love it.

The abfahrt down into Hochgurgl was also a surprise. All between the trees but unlike most of the other abfahrt's I've skied, this one is really wide. The snow was also holding up well with it only getting scrapey right at the bottom.

The other two skiers in our party were both more or less first timers and so were booked into ski school for most of the week. For the first two days one had only two people in their class. This swelled to about 4 later in the week. This was mirrored pretty much everywhere else with some very quiet pistes. Their 4 year old daughter also had 1-1 ski school in the mornings and 1-1 attention in the creche in the afternoons. Infact she could probably have done with a few more kids to play with.

All in all, we had a really good time. I could easily place it up there as one of my favorites. For a carver Hochgurgl was superb and the red 17 in Obergurgl was just a dream after a heavy snowfall.

If I go again I'll probably try and make sure I'm staying at the top end of town but there's not a lot in it to be honest.



The Hochgurgl Abfahrt


The Star Bar above the clouds


The view across Italy


The poshest urinal I've ever seen!

Sorry, didn't take too many photos. Have lots of very funny video mind. It's great skiing with learners!

Admin wrote:Looks fantastic... although looks like you had crap weather... :lol:

What altitude is that?

3050m I think.

Yes, weather was very good. Especially when you notice that the first three shots show that Italy was in the cloud. I'll send you your fee later.

ise wrote:all you've done is increase the diameter of the boot using the buckle and that has no flex at all

But don't forget the boot is made out of two pieces with a pivot point on either side. As you say, with the clip looser you increase the diameter of the boot and this lets the boot move on it's pivot hinge a bit more freely.

Either way, it's easy to test. Put your boots on, clip into your skis then push your knees towards the ski tips. The looser the clip the closer to the tips you'll get. Tighten them up and the boots will resist more.

ise wrote:loosing the lower buckles isn't going to alter the flex of the boot, it's just going to make them loose :lol: Tony's talking about something a lot of people find, it's possible to increase how tight the buckle is until it's right, it doesn't work out to crank it up and try and loosen it back, it's just one of those things.

It's not going to help you racing, it just means you'll need to articulate your leg more before the boot starts to load and transfer the force to the ski. That would be a bad thing.

Having a boot with high flex is good for some people, I like it a lot but if you push it then you'd need a bit of strength to control things.

A looser lower ankle clip deffinately allows you to increase the amount of ankle flex. At times this can be a benefit when you want to stop the skis 'swimming' but at other times you may need something stiff to lean against.

If I'm skiing normally I'll have them loose so I can really flex my ankles but if I'm carving I'll crank them up and propperly lean on them to keep the shovel of the ski biting.

If it twer me then it would be Salzburg and then Obertauern or Saalbach.

Not been to Obertauern but nearly have a couple of times as a short break.

AJ wrote:I would have parted with hard cash to see Reiner ski in the buff.

clicky here

WARNING: Contains bare Austrian butt :shock: