In preparation for our trip to Switzerland, Ben researched the numerous ski hills in the vicinity of Andrew & Mel’s place in Cham and collated them all onto this page. We knew that we wouldn’t manage to visit them all, there being in the high teens in terms of number of resorts, and as it turned out, we only actually visited three during this stay, so there are plenty to go at for a return visit!
But before even heading to the hills we spent a pleasant morning catching up with Beck’s cousin, Beth & her boyfriend Bobby who were checking out of Chez Lewis-Howe as we were checking in. They took us for a tour of Zug, a pretty little town nearby and for kaffee und kuchen at Treichler with it’s extensive and delicious cake selection. Having seen them off to the airport, we spent the afternoon with Mel on a hike at Rigi. We were a little troubled at the lack of snow at this point, part of the hike obviously being a ski run, so the next day we opted for one of the higher ski resorts just to be on the safe side. Our choice was Engelberg-Titliss for a fun filled first day on the hill.
From here on in, it’s probably easier just to watch the video to see what we got up to, but briefly our schedule went as follows:
Tuesday: Engelberg-Titlis for a sunny day snowboarding on perfectly groomed pistes, just the two of us. On our return we were treated to a cheese fondue and BBQ in the forest behind Drew & Mel’s apartment – a very cool way to spend the evening.
Wednesday: In the interests of saving ourselves for the forecast snow dump later in the week we took the day off boarding to check out Lucerne and Kussnacht and tour around Lake Zug.
Thursday: Still waiting for the snow to arrive and with Drew now in Linz for a few days and Mel tied to Cham as it was half day at school for Freyja, we took ourselves back to Engelberg, this time for cross country skiing around the 8km Gerschnialp loop. En route we got caught up in the aforementioned snow dump, requiring snow chains to get us up to the resort. A friendly Swiss roadie stopped to help us fit said chains, only to delight in telling us that our car, tyres and snow chains were all ‘scheisse’! The trip turned out to be more like cross country wading and lunch of gulaschsuppe and apfelstrudel at Gasthaus Gerschnialp was particularly welcome!
Friday: With Freyja safely in the care of the local school until 3.15pm we headed off with Mel to Stoos-Muotatal to take in the funky new funicular (steepest in the world) and ski the sweet powpow! The resort is really pretty and it’s somewhere we would happily come and stay if we didn’t already have accommodation just 30mins away! From the Fronalpstock side you can apparently see 10 lakes – we didn’t manage to count all 10, but it was still a spectacular view. In the evening, pooped from all the skiing we gave cooking a miss and headed out to the excellent Café Capra for burgers and a German lesson.
Saturday: Drew (having returned from Linz around midnight), Mel & Freyja headed off at the ungodly hour of 7.15am to Freyja’s ski training, leaving us to join them around 10.30am – well we are on holiday! Today’s resort of choice was Brunni-Alpthal, home of innumerable T-bar lifts and not a lot else. These are the snowboarders nemesis and Beck was very grateful to Drew & Mel for acting as her lift buddy and steering partner on each hip wrenching drag. With all of us present it was time for some serious GoPro action with the camera shared around so that everyone got a chance to show off their skills! Lunch was taken at the Berggasthaus Holzegg and we enjoyed it so much we returned again on Sunday for Schnitzel!
Sunday: Our last day – the week has flown by but there was still time to hit the slopes once more as we don’t fly until 8pm. We headed out to Stoos but got put off by the crowds – we feel like we might have seen it at its best on Friday’s Powder Day, so we continued on back to Brunni to explore the Mythen side of the mountain before heading to the airport. EasyJet manage to get us back only 20mins later than planned and we arrive back in Bamford at 1am, shattered, but already planning our next Swiss adventure!