J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by Innsbrucker

Fantastic snow there two days ago. Bottom stretch at Roshütte can get hard or slushy (not great as it is much used by beginners) but was fine. On balance Seefeld was not far from being at its best, though not perfect. No fresh powder, but Seefeld is not the place for that. A few little tracks beside the piste, fun if you like that kind of thing. Pistes a bit compacted but no too-shallow snow (there never is), no slush and virtually no ice. I would have gone again yesterday, and walked up on touring skis (so as to earn that mulled wine at Hochegg hut), but went elsewhere as the road is now closed owing to risk of earth slides, which makes the trip that bit longer. I guess the trains are unaffected.

It is true the weather conditions are not good for pistes, but they are pretty active with their snow canons and pisting machines at Seefeld, so generally the skiing is OK, except towards the end of the season when (not being very high) it is just a bit too warm in the bottom half. And if you take a chair lift from the botton at Rosshütte you end up on the less used side, where there is an (optional) shortish but steep bit of black run which can get very treacherous when icy. Generally best avoided. Otherwise Seefeld is very reliable.

There is powder and powder. I am pretty bad at it. But it has been warm lower down in Austria, and I have seen any ski-able powder yet, just plenty fresh-looking snow which is hard packed, and really challenging, if not dangerous (as I discovered yesterday trying to ski to the car-park across a field! though it is possible to ski it is not fun). Last year at a higher resort, I headed straight into what looked fresh snow, and it was hard as a rock. Maybe at high altitudes there is real fresh powder. So I guess the first skill for a beginner to learn, though rarely mentioned here, is identifying good skiable fresh powder.

What a horrible resort. The atrocious standard of pisting, and the apparent lack of catering facilities in this video, leaves me wondering whether the ski lift to the top is any better.

These guys are minibus taxis, much cheaper than normal taxis. But probably depends on whether they have other customers on the day, normally need to book. They speak good English in the office, & are reliable. The specialise in airports, probably they will wait for late flights up to a point.
http://www.tirol-taxi.at/index.php

There is also a Tirol snow card with a lot of resorts included, at a similar price. There is the Sunny Card for some resorts around Innsbruck, starts at Euro300. There must be others.

The Tirol Regio card and Tirol Freizeit Card are only available to people who are registered as resident. They include summer use & swimming baths as well as selections of ski resorts.

Each card has a different mix of resorts in roughly the same region, with some overlaps, which makes it complicated to choose one. Most of them are discounted if bought in October.

That is a good point. I find (and others here have said) that the colour coding bears little relation to difficulty. Where I am going this afternoon (Nordkette / Seegrube, not normally used by tourists) there are a lot of runs marked with red diamonds, which apparently means 'not a proper piste' or something. Anyway I know from last year they are ridiculously steep, more so than black. But generally even with those normal piste marks, the colours don't seem to mean much, except as a very vague guide, and difficulty also varies with snow condition.

I second Trencher's post way back in this thread recommending inline skating.

Largely with skiing in mind, I went to Club Blue Room in central London, bought some skates. I am glad I did not buy online, price was no higher in store, and got a good fit. And started skating, in spite of being over 50, 4 weeks ago. A lot of the fun of skiing, without the need for lift passes or snow. And great exercise.

As a complete beginner moving slowly on rollerblades and without skill, but skating every day, I got an amazing gain in fitness in the first two weeks after buying skates. A friend with MS improved her walking very markedly after two weeks re-learning, also moving slowly. And yet unlike gym or running, but like skiing, you are so absorbed in having fun and learning technique, that time flies and it does not feel like working out.


Skating totally has the feel of working the same thigh muscles which I find get tired in skiing. Also my balance (tested by standing on one foot) has greatly improved in my first weeks of inline skating, I am sure this will have a big impact on skiing. I hear great skaters say how fast they pick up skiing.

As well as legs and glutes, inline skating works on core and aerobic fitness. Like sking, it is weak on upper body, so to supplement core work and add in upper body work I have started pressups, using this programme http://hundredpushups.com/index.html. The aim so to get to 100 pushups within 6 weeks. It will probably take me 7 or 8. You can log progress at http://hundredpushups.com/index.html (my user name is John_B in case anyone is interested to see how it goes: I was interested to check out the progress of a few others).

Oh, and beginner skaters learn to fall safely. Not sure how far this will carry over, but the knack of going with the fall rather than fighting it (learnt through skating) did seem to help me today when I slipped walking on shingle on a steep mountain path.

Is there a difference between the way you start training someone who is intended to become a really good skier, maybe a professional, and the way you start training a tourist who will rate the ski school on how quickly they progress to getting down a run of any given colour reasonably fast and safely, without too much to regard for whether they are laying good technical foundations?