jamesdeluxe
Well-known member
- Joined
- Jul 17, 2020
For Day 4, next up was Brigels on the other side of the valley from the previous day's Obersaxen/Mundaun. Frequented almost exclusively by locals, 3,600 continuous verts with several ways down, a comparatively narrow ski area, maybe a half mile across.
Arriving into Brigels, you see that it's a proud home ski area to Switzerland's fourth official language, Romansh, which gets top-billing on street signs here in the canton of Graubünden.
In an inspired move: mid-afternoon on the upper-mountain HSQ, two friendly Romansh-speaking teens were giving out little booklets at the bottom that translated ski-area terms from German into Romansh, accompanied by an audio tutorial on the loudspeakers during the lift ride. Everyone on my chair was laughing while trying to pronounce the words correctly, which sounds like an odd 60/40 mixture of Italian/Spanish and Swiss German.
My SOP was to stay on the upper 2,600 verts, alternating high-speed cruising on velvety groomed trails with low-angle ungroomed runs through the windsift:
Gorgeous views across the valley from anywhere on the mountain:
Looker's left from the summit:
Looker's right along the ridge from the top, an excellent sidecountry run you can take all the way to the bottom. I would've done it if I'd had a partner:
The omnipresent Swizly Cider cow, always good for a photo opp:
While I wouldn't necessarily put Brigels in the "must-visit-again" category, it's a fun hill that underscores how even the comparatively less remarkable ski areas here are pretty damn good.
Arriving into Brigels, you see that it's a proud home ski area to Switzerland's fourth official language, Romansh, which gets top-billing on street signs here in the canton of Graubünden.
In an inspired move: mid-afternoon on the upper-mountain HSQ, two friendly Romansh-speaking teens were giving out little booklets at the bottom that translated ski-area terms from German into Romansh, accompanied by an audio tutorial on the loudspeakers during the lift ride. Everyone on my chair was laughing while trying to pronounce the words correctly, which sounds like an odd 60/40 mixture of Italian/Spanish and Swiss German.
My SOP was to stay on the upper 2,600 verts, alternating high-speed cruising on velvety groomed trails with low-angle ungroomed runs through the windsift:
Gorgeous views across the valley from anywhere on the mountain:
Looker's left from the summit:
Looker's right along the ridge from the top, an excellent sidecountry run you can take all the way to the bottom. I would've done it if I'd had a partner:
The omnipresent Swizly Cider cow, always good for a photo opp:
While I wouldn't necessarily put Brigels in the "must-visit-again" category, it's a fun hill that underscores how even the comparatively less remarkable ski areas here are pretty damn good.
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