Alpbach, Austria: Skiing

We fell in love with skiing when we learned in January and March 2018 and had been looking forward to getting back on the mountain for winter 2018/19. Having only spent 4 total days on the slopes last winter, we were able to dedicate 9 total days to skiing across two trips: one to Mittenwald, Germany during Christmas (3 days of skiing out of a 5-day trip) and another back to Alpbach, Austria in January (6 days of skiing out of an 8-day trip).

Day one of skiing was spent at the small hill in town. We quickly found our confidence and even followed a trail dug out of the side of the hill with tight turns and small humps (over which we were able to—timidly—get just a bit of air!).

The rest of our skiing days in Alpbach were spent up on the mountain; each day we would drive west to cable cars W1 and W2. We started on the small hill Blue 63, but quickly progressed to Blue 46, which served as the main spine for one of our main runs. There were a number of detours off of Blue 46 that we would mix in (the “Funslope”, Blue 46a, and Blue 46b) to keep things interesting.

As we got more comfortable, we also started mixing in more difficult segments (Red 43, Red 44, Red 47a). And eventually we tackled our first full red—Red 60 on the other side of the mountain! It felt good to see and feel the progression in our skill level over the course of one week.

We tried Blue 52 at one point, which had beautiful panoramic views, but much of the run was flat and required a lot of strength and stamina to get though. We also tried Blue 62 and Blue 62a a few times. Similarly, the views were beautiful, and though the trail was more downhill than Blue 52, it just wasn’t as fun as our other runs. We ended up sticking for the most part with the more downhill trails.

We still enjoy skiing as much as (if not more than!) we did last year and can now confidently say that week-long ski trips will be an annual tradition. We can’t wait to see where we end up next winter. Maybe you’ll see us carving up some black runs!