Skiing: Engelberg

Went skiing in Engleberg yesterday. I wish I had gone Saturday too, because the conditions were really good, one of the best skiing days I've ever had. On the train it was Kevin, Lindsey, Jacqui, Richard, Mike, Evan and myself. Tommy caught a later train because he had gone to Zürich the night before and stayed out late. On the train my LCD on my camera fried, but it seemed to take pictures the rest of the day, so it's better than nothing.

Kevin and his ski mustache

From the train

Shane and Adrienn had skied the day before and camped out so the plan was to meet them on the hill. For the first part of the day, Evan, Kevin, Mike and I did a bunch of runs on a T-bar near the top of the mountain. We got all the fresh snow, so it was good to practice on my skis in deeper powder, but it got tracked up pretty quickly, and there was a layer of ice under the powder.

Lots of tracks

We made our way down to some new runs, and found some chutes off to the side in a protected area. Evan, Kevin and I did a few laps of that, I got a couple clean 360s off this one wind lip, and then we decided to cross over to another side of the valley. By complete fluke we ran into Shane over there, and he joined up to show us where he'd been riding. His group from the day before had run into some problems with a broken collarbone, so he didn't get in a full day of riding, but had still had a blast. The opposite side of the valley was pretty good, there were a couple nice cliff drops in there, but we ended our run back on the first side of the valley.

Shane ready to hop in

We did a few more laps there with Shane, and then Shane and Evan headed off to check out the Laub, a big off-piste run with 1200m of vertical. Kevin and I hung back because we don't have any avy equipment yet. I had broken my pole on the last run, and while buying new ones we ran into Adrienn, Jacqui, Richard and Lindsey.

Shane looking pumped

More tracks

We all headed for lunch, and sat out on the balcony, even though it was pretty cold. We saw some skiers skiing the glacier, which looked really intense and dangerous, and even saw a helicopter lifting someone out of it. Crazily enough, we found out later that Mike had ridden the entire glacier, after only a few times snowboarding in his life. But that's Mike for you.

Cables over the glacier

Lunch break

Shane and Evan met up with us as we were heading back out on the hill, and informed us how awesome the Laub was, and that the danger was low. Kevin and I decided it would be okay to go, but wanted to ski with the other guys first. On the way to the chutes from the morning, I found and dropped a nice cliff, followed by Shane and then Evan. Only problem is Evan lost his ski and we couldn't find it. After about 20 minutes of looking Shane stepped on it about 5m down from where Evan fell. Next we hit the chutes, and Shane and I dropped a nice 5m wind lip into a soft landing. Once further on with Kevin and Evan, we looked back and saw the others sitting on the hill. We figured they were gonna split up anyways, so we headed over to the Laub.

Above the clouds

The snow over there was epic, for me at least. The hill was steep, there was really good coverage, and I got in an amazing run. I'm super glad I did it, but Kevin and I agree that we need to get some equipment in order to do more intense skiing.

Shane spraying snow

Kevin hopping down the hill

Getting in some nice turns in the Laub

At the bottom of Laub, we hiked back and caught pretty much the last gondola up, and went to do our chutes one more time. We found Jacqui there. Apparently the reason everyone was sitting on the hill before was that she had lost her ski under the snow. She had been looking for almost 2 hours, with no luck. After about 20 minutes, we found it, and Jacqui was relieved. We hit the ski out and met up with everyone at the base station, and headed home, completely satisfied.