Ischgl, Austria 18&19 April 2008
27th April 2008
All kinds of plans for this week came and went, at one stage I was going to the Oberland to climb the Finsteraarhorn but the weather up in the Oberland was awful and it’s a pretty awful place to get caught in bad weather. In the end as I was going to start a ski tour into the Silvretta from Ischgl I decided to go there a couple of days early and have a look at the Ischgl area in Austria.
It’s been quite some time since I skied in Austria, I was reckoning something like five years probably.
I reached Ischgl by taking a train via Zurich and Landeck-Zams (AT) and then up on the local post bus to Ischgl itself. Arriving mid-afternoon I took a walk around the village which is pretty uninspired, a type of “euro-alpin”style replicated all over the Alps and lacking any real character at all, just a bunch of hotels along a road. The atmosphere is so different from Zinal, in Ischgl everyone’s walking around with new short carving skis and expensive designer jackets, in Zinal people either wear technical gear or something they’ve had since the mid 80’s.
The next day out on the slopes was around the same, the pistes are dull beyond compare, each one pretty much the same as the next and hardly any alteration in terrain at all. All very flattering for the crowds in the designer jackets but not very interesting otherwise.
The terrain is a little redeemed by some of the off-piste though, it’s not very challenging but there’s some reasonable long lines which would suit a novice off-piste skier quite well probably.
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