J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by ise

Ian Wickham wrote:

bandit wrote:Wickers, having been given written answers to the questions set. I thought I would run one of the supplied answers through Google Search. It's not often that Google returns a 0 match, and a 0 partial match. I'd kinda hoped it would lead me to a source page so I could learn a bit more.

Uptight, no, bemused, yes.

:lol:

Right, lets get this cleared up once and for all, because my dinners nearly ready........I am going to set a ski quiz...I might need a week or so, I shall put up a prize, I will research all questions myself and it won't be as hard as Pavel's, are we up for that one my little sweethearts, everyone in favour say Aye..... :hunf: :hunf:

No, but it was sweet of you to ask before which will avoid any fuss later in case you complain what a thankless task it was we'll be able to point out it was an unsolicited task (which by and large, most thankless tasks turn out to be) :-)

No more quizzes please :evil:

amanda n wrote:
Gorgeous hotel, one problemo FULLY BOOKED aaarrrggghhh, next.

In October? I doubt it, closed more likely.

I've never thought Hintertux is particularly good personally, Pitztal or the Stubai are more to my liking for autumn skiing. Sölden isn't bad either and should also be operating by then and if you leave it a couple of weeks then Obergurgl will be opening which will be better than all of them.

In terms of a bus trip up the mountain you need to resign yourself to that, it's going to be glacier skiing and you'll have to ride all the way through the lift system to ski which will take an age. In Sölden you can drive or bus a long way up and step onto the snow practically.

The reasons the TO's aren't going at that time is probably sensible, there's so little terrain open that a week would be a little dull, a weekend though is great or having a car and spending a couple days in a couple of places is good. Even though many hotels and pensions will be closed it shouldn't be a problem getting somewhere to stay though, we used to just turn up.

As a footnote, apparently one of the tail-enders was helicoptered off, I did notice he was struggling on the climb and having a very hard time on the first pitch we skied down. I think he was Swiss, the state of his kit suggested he was fairly experienced so he might have been having an awful day. It's an easy day but it's still up at 3800m and a ski tour not a walk round the park :D

There's a lot of it about, rock climbing on Stanage in the UK last week the air ambulance took someone off and I know the same MRT was called out to Froggat and Birchen on the same day.

Pablo Escobar wrote:Can someone summarise the last 8 pages please? :D

more research went into the answers than the questions :lol:

RoseR wrote:Thats brilliant Ise, what a way to spend a Bank holiday weekend. Very jealous :mrgreen:

what's a bank holiday? :lol:

This is a local or Swiss thing, the route over the Lötschenlücke is reckoned to be a sort of Swiss vallee blanche which might be about right as a Swiss version would probably involve a couple of hours climbing and the use of public transport. The Lötschenlücke itself is a high pass between the Bernese Alps, connecting the Lötschental valley to the Aletsch Glacier in the canton of Valais.

I decide to leave my car in Spiez and take the 0556 train to Interlaken before switching to the Jungfrau trains changing at Lauterbrunnen and Kleine Scheidegg, this makes sense as on the return I can hop off the train at Spiez and be home earlier. This being Switzerland of course there's a fair few ski tourers boarding the train already.



This is a pretty casual but popular trip loosely organised, the basic plan is everyone meets outside the door from the Jungfraujoch complex after the first train of the day, kits up, drops into some loose groups and away you go. There's around 30 or 40 people, mostly local, turned up today so we gear up and size each other up )



It's a big glacier and the run down to Konkordiaplatz can be pretty good but today it's a bit tricky, we encounter two problems, first, the snow is boilerplate, about 10cm of ice with softer, old snow underneath and it's hard to ski, the second problem is more serious though, the visibility is so poor that some micro-navigation is needed to avoid the two large crevasses near the top of the glacier, so for a short section we're all in a line picking our way through.



Having cleared the worse of the dangers the sun comes out and we can see Konkordiaplatz and let skis run easily down to it. Konkordiaplatz is a remarkable place, it's the junction of four glaciers, the Aletschfirn, the Jungfraufirn, the Ewigschneefäld and the Grüneggfirn, it's also the start of the Aletsch glaicer and gives it's name to the "Konkordiaplatz Charter" an agreement between the local governments to protect the unique environment of the Jungfrau-Aletsch UNESCO World Heritage site. The Aletsch Glacier is the largest in the alps in fact.



Now the climbing starts, we all stop to fix climbing skins, shed layers, top up sun cream and take a drink.



We climb for a couple of hours breaking the climb at one point to have a picnic lunch where the old boys inevitably produce hip flasks with assorted rocket fuel probably knocked up in their sheds.



Arriving at the Lötschenlücke it's pretty cold as the wind whips up over the pass so it's on with extra layers and off with the skins before starting the descent.



The descent here is marginally better than the other side, it's possible to turn without jump-turning but the snow gets progressively heavier as we're descending.



You can see (above) how the snow, acting like a fluid, has flowed over the landscape leaving patterns like the sea does on a beach.




The debris of older slides (above). We also pass the new Anenhütte which has opened up since I was last here, back in March 2007 the old hut was destroyed by an avalanche, I've not stayed at the new one but the photo's look fantastic.




By my reckoning we're able to ski about 4km further than my last time on this route, we skied to Faflenalp at 1800 or so before and called a taxi to get to Blatten, this time the road is snow covered and closed so we ski down it to Blatten, have a beer, take the bus to Goppensten (predicatably full of tourers) and hop on the train through the Lotschberg to Spiez.

Not a bad day out, something around 27 km of skiing, approx. 700m of climbing and 2500m of descent.

bandit wrote:There has been an avalanche, 6 climbers dead...BBC :(

http://newsvote.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8031312.stm

Amazing peice of journalism

Correspondents say avalanches have been frequent in the Alps this year after heavy winter snowfalls.

:roll: :roll:

Recent snowfall certainly has made things dangerous, I witnessed a huge serac failure yesterday off the Aletschorn which triggered a large slide onto the Langgletscher which we were skiing on at the time.

bandit wrote:

"the attractiveness of our sites and quality of our services showed through"

As the saying goes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I find little attractive to my eye in the Tarentaise Ski Factories.

It's a good business model though, if CdA could stick a dome over Birmingham and fill it with snow they would (and it would be an improvement) and they'd fill it if the bars were doing two for one of beer and they claimed a couple of hundred km of piste.