Skiing Update

With my son and his fiancé in town this week, we did a Tirolean ski trifecta hitting the Arlberg on Tuesday, Stubai Glacier on Wednesday, and Ischgl yesterday (Saturday).  All three were bluebird days and snow conditions at Stubai were quite good.

I'll focus here on Ischgl, which is located in the Paznaun Valley of western Tirol.  It's a bit of a haul on public transit (for me about 2 hours via bus, then train, then another bus), so I was glad to have a friend invite us to come along with him.  But first we had to play a game of Tetris to get four pair of 92 to 106 mm  waist-width Alpine skis and bindings into the ski slot of a Volkswagen Golf.  Somehow it worked and we were able to add three pairs of ski poles too. 

Ischgl is a big place with an abundance of high elevation northwest facing terrain.  There is a relatively flat area for "combat" skiing that seems to be popular with the tourists.  

But also some great advanced terrain, which for some reason I didn't take any photos of yesterday, so I'll drop in the one below from a few years ago which was taken looking up a chair called the Gampenbahn, which has the longest vertical rise of any six-person chair in the world (924 meters/3031 feet).  

Ischgl is also one of the hardest partying places in the Alps, infamous for a superspreader event at the beginning of COVID. One of my Tyrolean friends jokingly says that Ischgl is German for "evil place."  I probably wouldn't stay there, but I'm happy day trip to enjoy the turns and incredible scenery.  

Ischgl is also interconnected with the Swiss resort of Samnaun.  You can ski both on the same pass.  I've skied the Samnaun side before (it's got less interesting terrain than the Ischgl side), but never skied all the way down to Samnaun.  We figured we should give it a try.  The piste-route descends from off the photo to the right and then into the valley pictured below.  We enjoyed some off-piste powder turns from here though to make it interesting.  

Getting back to Ischgl involves first ascending the double-decker cable car that transports people to and from the ski area above Samnaun.  The photo below is from the top station looking back down into the Samnaun Valley. 

Perhaps if it was snowing in the Wasatch I'd feel differently, but right now I'm not missing Utah at all.