J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by Innsbrucker

Looks great.

Salzburg itself is also worth a day sigthseeing if you get the chance.

In Austria no problems.

Edit, in some parts of Austria roads blocked from snow. But not Tirol.

PS I can confirm I have ordered tickets online from German railways website, both to print off, and some which had to be posted to UK (which they only allow with about 10 days notice), and it worked well.

The Austrian rail website looks the same as the German, but prices are sometimes different for the same journey, maybe owing to each having a fixed quota of special offer tickets...

You could also use German rail website, www.bahn.de . You can book online and print off tickets but sometimes not when it is international, they post them.

The Euro29 ticket, or 39 for international, are first come first served, so do not rely on getting this price unlesse you prebook (with a reservation for a particular train, a problem if flight is late). But Worgl is so close that probably the price is ok if you book on the day at Munich airport railway booking office.

Flying to Innbsbruck would probably be easier, public bus or taxi to station, then train, Austrian railways www.oebb.at

On the railway site just do Muenchen Flughaen Terminal - Woergl Hbf (or Wörgl Hbf if your keyboard has umlaut....), it gives you possible routes. Some routes from Muenchen Hauptbahnhof are direct, others you change, but in all cases it is a 30km ride from the airport to the Hauptbahnhof (10 euros if booked on its own), which is why Innsbruck (Easyjet) or even Salzburg (Ryanair) are good options, with airport close to town, esp. in Ibk.

To avoid having to change at Munich main station I highly recommend spending a little extra and booking http://www.airport-transfer.com/ minibus / shared taxi service Munich or Salzburg airport-Innsbruck, not sure whether they would stop in Worgl, but you could ask, I think they speak good English, and have an office in Munich airport.

I hestitate to reply as I am not a great skiier. But I know all about the feeling of instinctively leaning backwards, then trying to compensate in a way that upper legs get tired very fast.

It gets even worse on moguls as the slight lean-back is accentuated as you go up the mogul, and it is easy to fall.

One way I tried to compensate is to lean way forwards to overcompensate. It sort of works, and made me feel like I had a racing posture (???), but is not good style & not recommended.

For me getting the boots done up nice and snug helped. I put them on. then tighten them. Then tighten them again after the first run.

As noted above, keeping arms forwards, at least until better balance comes more naturally, seems to help. Probably I should practice without poles sometimes, but I do like the exercise where you hold the poles up horizontal, like a tea tray, rather than actually using them, as that seems to straighten out posture & balance.

What I am working on now is keeping upper body more static altogether, and turning with the legs. I find it best to practice and get it right (or something like right) first on easy slopes, and slowly.

This week I was given my first try in powder by GF, who expressly instructed me to lean back a bit, putting more weight on upper legs. But that is something else, and a totally different feeling than being on the piste, and using the upper legs to fight an instinctive response to lean back.

Maybe good skiers do not undestand this. I told GF how I have this tendency for my weight to go backwards. She just said something like, 'Why would you want to lean back? You know you should be in the knees. I cannot get my head round it. Just make sure your boots are done up tight.'

All of which I guess, in summary, just seconds Trencher's point about boots being a good fit.

PS, my boots are my own, anyway they are fairly flexible, and the shop did not make a big deal about fitting them properly, but they did heat them up and put them on real tight while hot, so the foam molded to my shape. Do they do that with rental boots? Probably not. The guy in the shop looked at my very old boots, with single latches, and said, 'These old boots are not bad, but look, the foam has got old and lost its resilience, so they do not fit closely.'

PS check the forecast if possible (though with Easyjet it is better to book in advance). Yesterday was beautiful weather, but today is horrible. It is supposed to get better next week.

Recent news in Austria is
1. A lot of avalanches and a lot of deaths in recent days;
2. Italy has made it a serious criminal offence to cause and avalanche, which people in South Tirol (Alto Adige - German-speaking area in Italy) / Dolomites are saying practically makes it illegal to go ski touring, as no one can guarantee not to accidentally cause an avalanche;
3. a guy in Switzerland, buried by an avalanche, was pulled out after 17 hours till alive, with hypothermia, and survived. Said to be very unusual!

I have spent a lot of time at Seefeld, and done most of my three seasons skiing there, at all parts of the season, and have given my views elsewhere on this forum. To recap:

One of the closest resorts to Innsbruck, which is a plus (there is a free bus, I drive but car park gets full sometimes, also watch out over drink drive, Saturday the cops were checking people driving out). But with being close to Ibk goes the fact it is relatively low altitude. However, just now the snow is great. Saturday were loads of moguls, yesterday they had groomed most of them out. Both days were good skiing, though we still found a little ice higher up, and I did a bit of skiing on the sides of the piste which was fun (but not to go off piste properly as there have been loads of avalanches in the past couple of weeks or so in Austria).

Also big on langlauf.


A lovely little winter-sport town, with good choice of restaurants and bars, not super-smart and expensive but reasonably smart.
There are two ski areas, Geschwandkopf which I have not visited, so I only speak about the larger one, Rosshuette. Nice self-service restaurant at Rosshuette itself, skialm often with noisy music at the valley station, and three nice huts on the pistes. There are various lifts, but bascially two peaks from the valley station, and two main routes down.

The scenery is absolutely glorious.

Rosshuette is pretty much geared to families and learners, with plenty of blue piste, and equall amount of red, and very little black runs. There is a playground type area for freestyle. There are usually a lot of children out, and a lot of ski teachers. During the week you get parties of local school children, but they are not really a problem, though when I was even less experienced than I am know, I was nervous about colliding with some small child through my own incompetence.

It gets busy, not that I have had to wait for lifts, but pistes can be crouded. A fair number of Russians and Italians come, a few British and Americans, but above all it is a fairly easy drive from Germany so predominantly a mix of Germans and locals.

I have been pulled up before for saying this, but I still think you see a bigger proportion of inexperienced skiiers here than at resorts which are more predominantly used by locals, as Kuhtai & Axamer Lizums. This makes me nervous, turning to see someone overtaking me obviously out of control, and even on the short black there were people who really should not have been there (I was one, entered it by mistake...but there were worse skiers than me trying to pass me, it was a bit icy and one poor guy fell twice and skidded a long way).

One gets the feeling at Rosshuette that everything is well run. I never hired skis but the shop seems good if busy at times.

On the whole a thumbs up.