jamesdeluxe
Well-known member
- Joined
- Jul 17, 2020
It snowed all of yesterday, so I was expecting a powder pigout today and that's exactly what I got: absolutely one for the books. In German, whenever you want to say that something was killer/amazing/epic, the expression is "Das war ja der Hammer!" ("That was the hammer!). Well, today was the hammer.
I went to a locals ski area called Klewenalp, located right alongside the stunning Vierwaldstättersee, known in English as Lake Lucerne. To get there from my hotel in a tiny mountaintop village, you go down a brutal switchbacked road that's literally 1.5 cars wide, more than 3,000 verts tall, and with a flimsy guardrail that I'm reasonably certain wouldn't stop a car from plunging to its demise. Let's just say that it was absolutely no fun driving up in a snowstorm last night in a manual, two-wheel-drive Peugeot. This morning, it looked a lot friendlier; the only danger was being hypnotised by the view and forgetting to keep your eyes on the road.
After driving through the six-mile-long Seelisberg Tunnel, you arrive in the lakeside town of Beckenried:
... and park right in the village parking lot, from which you board a tram to mid-mountain.
Here's the view looking down from the upper platform:
While posting the trail map, I'll once again state the disclaimer about locals’ ski areas in the Alps: small for them, big for us:
Even though I arrived a bit late, 10 am, finding the goods was not difficult. I warmed up with a few quickies on the Klewenstock peak:
... hit a few shots in/near the woods:
Then headed over to the Chälenegg sector, where I spent the next 2.5 hours lapping all that terrain just below where the arrow is pointing on that sign:
Chälenegg chair:
You can see the traverse just below the flatirons -- the best stuff was just beyond the ridge on the far right:
The same pitch as something like "Ballroom" at Alta, but much much wider and, ahem, no people.
A guy from Alpinforum who lives right near the base of the ski area posted <a href="http://www.alpinforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=145&t=54194&start=50">virtually identical pix</a>, but with a better camera. For our benefit, he even wrote in English what he thought of today! I have no idea how we didn't run into each other.
Private Club:
Around 1:45, I finally took a lunch break with the obligatory lounge chair in the sun:
Swiss people are into guns too:
I went to a locals ski area called Klewenalp, located right alongside the stunning Vierwaldstättersee, known in English as Lake Lucerne. To get there from my hotel in a tiny mountaintop village, you go down a brutal switchbacked road that's literally 1.5 cars wide, more than 3,000 verts tall, and with a flimsy guardrail that I'm reasonably certain wouldn't stop a car from plunging to its demise. Let's just say that it was absolutely no fun driving up in a snowstorm last night in a manual, two-wheel-drive Peugeot. This morning, it looked a lot friendlier; the only danger was being hypnotised by the view and forgetting to keep your eyes on the road.
After driving through the six-mile-long Seelisberg Tunnel, you arrive in the lakeside town of Beckenried:
... and park right in the village parking lot, from which you board a tram to mid-mountain.
Here's the view looking down from the upper platform:
While posting the trail map, I'll once again state the disclaimer about locals’ ski areas in the Alps: small for them, big for us:
Even though I arrived a bit late, 10 am, finding the goods was not difficult. I warmed up with a few quickies on the Klewenstock peak:
... hit a few shots in/near the woods:
Then headed over to the Chälenegg sector, where I spent the next 2.5 hours lapping all that terrain just below where the arrow is pointing on that sign:
Chälenegg chair:
You can see the traverse just below the flatirons -- the best stuff was just beyond the ridge on the far right:
The same pitch as something like "Ballroom" at Alta, but much much wider and, ahem, no people.
A guy from Alpinforum who lives right near the base of the ski area posted <a href="http://www.alpinforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=145&t=54194&start=50">virtually identical pix</a>, but with a better camera. For our benefit, he even wrote in English what he thought of today! I have no idea how we didn't run into each other.
Private Club:
Around 1:45, I finally took a lunch break with the obligatory lounge chair in the sun:
Swiss people are into guns too:
