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Where are the chairs coming from?

Lift theme continues... What's wrong with this one?

There are plenty of free runs here. Some areas are marked as no go on the map, but everywhere else you can dive if you dare. See the tiny specks on the ridge in the first picture? They climb before they go. That could've been you. See happy folks boarding helicopter on the second one? Yeah, I wouldn't dare. The guy on the fourth is about to dive ungroomed red slope on powder. There are ungroomed slope runs and tree skiing too, but trees are there only in the lower part of the mountains. We skied 5 days so far, and will add another two hours tomorrow morning. It's gonna snow again, and so I'm not optimistic. Then we'll hit castles in Germany. The car is VW Golf hatchback FWD with winter tires. Feels glued to the road. Even in the yesterday's storm. We rented chains, but didn't have to use them. Infotainment cluster sucks. And for some reason it throws a warning and a single beep every time I exceed 30km/h apparently due to winter tires. I don't understand the logic behind it.

Floating in the air

Driving home wasn't fun, but luckily when we descended some 500m, the roads became better, and it clearly didn't snow that much there.

Today was I Forgot How To Ski Day. The forecast was right on the money. 100% clouds, snow starting in the morning and accumulating to about a foot by 4pm. It was close to impossible to ski right from the very beginning. All is white, we couldn't see a thing. No horizon anywhere, mountains have all dissolved in the milk, and the worst part - we couldn't see terrain and snow below us. We picked the widest trails of all and went down them multiple times making reeeeeally wide turns marker to marker, for the markers were the only thing we could make out. It was good that we studied the map by now and learnt some trails really well, but even so, the sensation of feeling the terrain with your legs rather than your eyes was hard to swallow. In fact some of us just felt sick of being constantly and unexpectedly thrown around. By about noon there was enough snow on the ground so that we decided to ditch piste skis and went for whatever else they could give us, which turned out to be Dynastar 90/180. That stopped sinking and entertained us for some time with the new sensation of floating on top and silent skiing. Too bad that didn't fix the visibility. At one point I went to an almost virgin red trail that I was zooming through all day yesterday, tried to cautiously ski it down while sinking almost to knees, and suddenly in the beginning of a right turn started to feel weightless. Tried hitting the brakes, but nothing happened. As far as I could tell, I was supposed to stop already, for nothing was moving around me anyway, but yet the weightlessness didn't quite correlate with that. Turned out I was falling to the right and back, until I hit the snow and my skis ejected. All was due to a sudden and unseen change of pitch in that part of the trail. By 3 the mountain was completely empty. Whoever ventured to the slopes today called it quits. The guy at the ski shop only chuckled at us saying that while he loves to ski powder, he prefers to do it the day after the snowfall. Tomorrow's gonna be cloudy in the morning changing to partly cloudy in the afternoon. I kinda hope it won't be this milky again, and we'll be able to pick up some speed.

Nah, not here. Almost nobody is skiing piste on anything wider than the lower 80s. You probably freerode a lot with a guide, judging by your thread, and that's a completely different story. The gapers must've all learnt how to speak German, as it's close to impossible to hear a conversation in English on the lifts. Many don't speak English at all. So brush up on your German skills if you care about not looking like a gaper in Arlberg in between snowstorms. Those extra mm of waist won't help. Anyway, today we didn't venture too far from the home zone, and were able to find a cluster of trails that remained in pristine condition throughout the day. The key was to avoid migration paths and stay on more challenging terrain. Even though crowds are very light, trails that are parts of some route see more people that tend to slide more, and that destroys the snow. Unfortunately the weather is changing. It's gonna snow tomorrow, and the weather was already party cloudy to cloudy today. When it gets cloudy, you can't see a thing here, and skiing slows to a crawl. Literally, can't see a thing. Haven't experienced this before, so am a little worried about tommorow. I ditched my Vantage 83mm in favour of Doubledecker Redster GS 72mm, and couldn't be happier with the switch. I thought I was okay on Vantage until I've tried Redster. Sooo easy at speed, slicing through rough snow like it's not there, grippy on scraped slopes and trivial to start/switch turns. My friend is on Redster SL, and while it's great in the mornings, it's getting pretty tiring in the afternoons. Not on these GS. No new pictures today, as the Alps remain as beautiful as the were prior this week. The snowman is real snow.

Sure, I guess that's how gaper places look, most are on Atomic racing skis, $1K a pair, and shops testing skis from 2020.

It's funny that you ask... Let me give you a perspective of what people are on here... About 2% or less is the share of snowboarders. I've seen only one guy who was on 184 skis, everybody else is on 175 or shorter. I'd say that the majority of skis have width in the 70s. Plenty of folks on slaloms in the 60s. The percentage of people on skis that are wider than lower 80s is even less than the percentage of snowboarders. Yeah, sometimes you run into someone on clearly powder skis, but that someone would be an exception to the rule and he looks like a lost puppy. It hasn't snowed for a week. Brandwise 50% of people are on various flavours of Atomic. Handmade in Austria clearly dominates the market. Then come Heads, but not Monsters, rather Supershapes, Rebels, things like that. Some Fischers, mostly RC4, but older models. I've seen only one recent Curv. Volkl is represented by Racetiger. I've seen one pair of Kendos and zero RTMs. Stocklis are there, but I haven't seen Lasers. Kastles can be found, but are rare. Also they're mostly LXs, I've seen only one pair of MX on the slopes, and I've been really looking. Nordica is rare too. Mostly NRGY. Nobody has heard of Enforcers or Navigators.

Well, the weather is good so far, but the forecast for tomorrow calls for clouds, and then we'll have three snow days in a row. I doubt there will be much visibility once it starts falling, but depending on how high the clouds will be, it might be fun to ski around the peaks.

I can understand now why Warth is a cheaper place to live in. It's remote (45 mins to cross local ski area), it doesn't have enough lodging in the walking distance, and it's just not so picturesque. As much as I like our current apartment (two bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchen and a living room), next time I'll probably choose to stay in Lech. Houses overlooking the river, lifts are right there, and overall it's much better connected.

Restaurants sometimes have a view to die for. Sometimes they even make the view.

Today's lifts took a dive down. Yesterday it was all Hi-Tech, today it's this...

We did the White Circle today. It's a set of trails and lifts that connect Kech, Zurs and Zug in a big circle. Took us 45 minutes to get out of our zone to Lech and then 3.5 hours to do the circle. Views were breathtaking, trails not very much so because a lot of people apparently choose to roam them, and one can even time himself on how fast he can complete the circle, and post results online. This circle is the first time where I've seen lift lines here. It was closed last week until Friday due to the passed storm and wind. Even today one lift wasn't too comfortable to sit on due to strong head wind.

Well, it hasn't snowed since last Thursday, and that shows. Positive temperatures during the day and freezing ones at night produce hard and frozen corduroy at the bottom of the mountain. Within an hour it softens up, but waiting is counterproductive, for by 1pm moguls form on many trails, and skiing becomes unpleasant. Mountain works 9-4:30. It seems that red and black trails do better in the afternoon because less people go on them, but steep parts of blue trails become real shit. We argue a LOT among ourselves, it's just hard to make people get down to the car in time in the mornings! "This is a vacation" - they moan. Yeah right!

We skied from 9 to 3 today with a single break for lunch. And hardly could finish one zone near Warth. I don't think there was a trail that we've skied more than 3 times, it's just there are so many of them. By the end of the day you're not really skiing anymore because of how tired you're. It's dangerous skiing tired by itself, but when most difficult parts turn into moguls, it's even worse. And then you may need a ride in this...

It's a double lift with midstation. Gondolas ride all the way from bottom to the top, there is no exit in the middle. Chairs ride from midstation to the top. People hop on the chairs, and then are injected into the stream of gondolas with a 2:1 ratio. Two chairs after each gondola. Questionable design because if chairs have to stop, so do the gondolas.

If you look closer at first pic, you'll see that cabins are intermixed with chairs. How's that possible?

Speaking of lifts, who can tell me what's wrong with this one? Hint: the second photo is a midstation.

The place where I was hoping to rent Kastles has really let me down. Turned out to be a very pro-Atomic store, all sorts of SL, GS, doubledeckers and the line that came to replace doubledeckers this year with a rod on top. Hardly any wide skis here. Everybody is skiing piste, and the piste becomes a real shit on steep parts by 3pm. The freeride tracks are there, but I haven't seen anybody going off trail today. Here's a nice pic with both Atomics and the tracks. There's no skiing under this lift btw.

The mountains are magnificent. Once off the base, there's no coming back, nor there is a need to. You roam from lift to lift, over the peaks and sidewise, no roads in sight, only random restaurants scattered around the mountains.

Whoo-hoo, we've made it there! The roads were so windy that some of us got hit by motion sickness. There's zero snow in Zurich, green grass and singing birds, but in Warth at the mountain base at 1400m elevation there's half a meter cover still left from the last storm. That's all despite +5C during the day and some rain two days ago.

This is just so sick. The OTHER guy now needs support to cope?? Like a shrink?

It's certainly looking brighter today. If yesterday they had only 88/305km of piste open, now it's 198/305km with 68/88 lifts.