Another year, another trip to the Arlberg. We arrived at the end of a super Arctic freeze, with a palpable relief in Lech that the -25C temps had moved on. After a day of funshine, small storms moved in delivering a solid 10cm+ of snow each night to play in for the next two days. It was perfect cruising conditions – morning pow, then to Warth one day, St Anton the other, where the conditions on Rendl were especially fine.
Spring returned for a day, perfect for cruising the north facing slopes of Stuben. Then a serious storm arrived. A classic foggy Lech pow day ensued – great snow, iffy viz. A day for the hardcore amongst us. Beer sales in town were up that day, I suspect.
It continued to snow heavily overnight, and the morning sun revealed mountains coated in 20-30cm of fluffy, light snow. The sort of day when you have heliskiing for the cost of a day ticket. A GoPro day for sure.
We finished the trip with Spring gripping the weather for the last 2 days. Some corn, some amazing slushy bumps, even a hint of light drizzle thrown into the mix.
Overall, another superb visit. This has been a great snow year in the Arlberg, and the base was deep everywhere. Crowds were light except in Zuers, where the new lift link to St Anton seems to bring a constant stream of visitors every morning. I think we skied Zuers less than ever before for this very reason. Weirdly St Anton seemed quieter.
Lots of pics here. And for the three of you who follow this blog, my knee mostly survived to fight another day. That made me very hoppy 🙂
Our current theory is that Mission Ridge Skiing and Snowboarding Resort is simply a front for an alcohol sales business. This end of February weekend certainly provided considerable evidence towards confirming that theory. A sunny, cold Saturday morning dawned, with 4+ inches of excellent pow blanketing the mountain. Skiing both on and off groomed was really fantastic. It even got vaguely busy about 10am, with a few minutes of almost unheard of line control on Chair 2. And waits for maybe 3 minutes for a ride. 3 minutes!!!
It really was quite amazing, especially given the high-quality conditions.
I also like to think management read my last blog post about only skiing groomers this weekend to help my knee recovery. Miraculously Lemolo was groomed, Allah was groomed, and the ‘tree shot’ below the top pitch of Tumwater was groomed. Unheard of! Unfortunately, it seems it was not my plea, the real reason being the mountain acquired a new winch cat groomer. They were certainly putting it to good use. With a light wind blowing snow up these runs all day, they were quite superb indeed.
Sunday was almost weirder. Gale force winds were forecast so predictably Chair 2 didn’t open. But with serious dumpage happening, we expected horrid lift lines at chairs 3 and 4.
The reality? We skied on to every chair all day. If there were 200 people skiing, I’d be amazed.
We traversed from Chair 3 to the lower Bomber runs, getting fresh tracks every run in blower, continually refreshing pow. We hiked the cat track past Johnsons to pick up a few more dreamy pow turns. Conditions were so good they even tempted me off the groomers into trees on lower Wawa and off the Warren Miller Memorial run (aka Tillicum – geddit? it’s cryptic).
What a weekend. And by all account from my buddies this weekend, it got even better …
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