jamesdeluxe
Well-known member
- Joined
- Jul 17, 2020
After a mostly sunny weekend, the weather turned gray again on Monday with low cloud levels and flurries so I took most of it off as a rest day to prepare for what wxers predicted would be a partly sunny Tuesday at an indy ski area I'd visited and liked two years ago: Tschiertschen (pronounced CHEER Chen).
Even 24 hours out, they were sticking with that forecast; however, it turned into a surprise powder day with nuking nonstop from bell to bell. Even more interesting, this was more of a North American storm experience in that I was skiing a place that had trees 2/3 up its 3,400-foot vertical AND you could actually see where you were going, even above treeline.
Instead of the normal $45 ticket price, I scored a popular midweek special from Tschiertschen's website, the "Pistenknüller" (for lack of a better translation, the "trail hit"): $29 gets you an all-day lift ticket plus a nice lunch at any of the the five on-mountain restaurants:
My pix are pure storm day = no great visuals, sorry. Half a foot was already down when I got on the lift at 9:45 and it fell at an inch an hour until I stopped at 4 pm. I'd bet that they ended up with a good 15 inches by the time the system moved out mid-evening. There couldn't have been more than 20 people on the entire hill, if that, so every run was fresh tracks unless you were skiing right under a lift. Here's what Tschiertschen looks like on a nice day (I added my photos from two weeks later at the bottom of the thread):
It was difficult to find people to use as photo subjects. Here are the only ones I ran across:
As I was leaving the restaurant; these boarders were arriving, no doubt to take advantage of the Pistenknüller lunch deal:
Mid-afternoon strudel break:
Even 24 hours out, they were sticking with that forecast; however, it turned into a surprise powder day with nuking nonstop from bell to bell. Even more interesting, this was more of a North American storm experience in that I was skiing a place that had trees 2/3 up its 3,400-foot vertical AND you could actually see where you were going, even above treeline.
Instead of the normal $45 ticket price, I scored a popular midweek special from Tschiertschen's website, the "Pistenknüller" (for lack of a better translation, the "trail hit"): $29 gets you an all-day lift ticket plus a nice lunch at any of the the five on-mountain restaurants:
My pix are pure storm day = no great visuals, sorry. Half a foot was already down when I got on the lift at 9:45 and it fell at an inch an hour until I stopped at 4 pm. I'd bet that they ended up with a good 15 inches by the time the system moved out mid-evening. There couldn't have been more than 20 people on the entire hill, if that, so every run was fresh tracks unless you were skiing right under a lift. Here's what Tschiertschen looks like on a nice day (I added my photos from two weeks later at the bottom of the thread):
It was difficult to find people to use as photo subjects. Here are the only ones I ran across:
As I was leaving the restaurant; these boarders were arriving, no doubt to take advantage of the Pistenknüller lunch deal:
Mid-afternoon strudel break:
