Unexcused Absences Skiing in Lech-Zürs, Austria (he said)

Skiing in Lech-Zürs, Austria (he said)

by Kent 13 Feb 2018

Second half of January, 2018 – Austrian Alps. In the quest to eventually bring our website back up to the present, it’s time to switch gears from our French canal-boat adventures and travel back to Europe for some skiing. Practically everyone we spoke to, when we said we wanted to ski in Austria, said we had to go to Lech. So off we went for two weeks as the opening act in a 6-week European ski vacation.

The twin areas of Lech-Zürs, pronounced by the locals as “Leshch-Zoeurs” as only a native German speaker can (side note; the Germans seem to add extra letters when pronouncing their words, whereas the French proudly ignore up to a third of the letters in their words), are sort of the Vail/Beaver Creek of Austria. The prices and level of luxury are comparable, and the “fake European walking village” of Vail appears to have been lifted almost directly from the real European walking village of Lech.

Lech; a real European walking village

The day we arrived — flight to Zurich, train to St. Anton, bus to Lech, taxi to our chalet — the Alps were in the final days of a serious, multi-day snowstorm. It was questionable whether we’d even make it to our room; the road to Lech goes right through some serious avalanche terrain, and it’s not uncommon for the village to be completely cut off by the threat of slides. As it happened, our bus made it through, but the following day both roads into Lech were completely closed for about a day.

Forecast for 1.5m of snow

Road closures on either side of Lech

A serious snowpack

After the storm

The good news about a snowstorm is of course the fresh snow. The bad news about a snowstorm in the Alps is that, because the slopes are mostly above tree-line, the falling snow and clouds create white-out conditions, where you can’t tell up from down. So our first day we were limited to the lower slopes near the village, where there were a few trees and some houses to use as points of reference.

Snowpack on a roof

Cablecar to Oberlech in the snow

The upper mountain in Lech

But the bonus is that once the storm cleared (after dropping around 1.5 meters of snow over 5 days), the entire, massive connected area of Lech-Zürs/St. Christoph/St. Anton/Warth/Schröcken offered up magnificent skiing conditions. As an added bonus, most of the main chairlifts and gondolas in Lech-Zürs have heated seats. I am not making this up.

Apres-ski in Oberlech

St. Christoph

Looking towards Trittkopf in Zürs

Europeans in general seem to enjoy skiing on specific routes or circuits, and we encountered multiple ones at the three ski regions we visited. The main one at Lech-Zürs is the Weisse Ring (a 22-km circle route that goes clockwise from the town square in Lech, into Zürs, down a long trail to Zug, and up what had to be the world’s longest double chairlift back to Lech. There is also a “Run of Fame” that runs end-to-end from Warth to St. Anton, with a 60,000 foot vertical drop over 65km of slopes. And once you get to the other end, you have no hope of getting back before the lifts close — it would take pretty much an entire day of hard skiing to complete the one-way effort. We did not try this one.

Skiing the “White Ring”

Lech at dusk

A secret ski run in Zürs

Some additional thoughts on Austria:

Every country in Europe travels to Austria to ski; we’ve heard the usual languages (Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Norwegian — or maybe it was Swedish, it’s hard to tell) plus some unusual ones, for us at least (Russian, Polish, Bulgarian, Arabic).
The level of skiing in Austria caught us off guard. Most Austrians are really, really good skiers; even grandma carries an avalanche kit for skiing off-piste. I guess we shouldn’t be too surprised, the entire western half of the country is in the Alps. Plus, they invented modern skiing.
The locals are very friendly and welcoming – the German language even has a single word (naturally) for “the state or feeling of warmth, friendliness, and good cheer” that’s prevalent in the Austrian Alps. Repeat after me: Gemütlichkeit.
As a very good friend told us before we flew over, in Austria, actions are either forbidden, or they’re obligatory.
Bacon, or at least their version of it (thinly sliced, often cured instead of cooked, and called “Speck” in German), is a major staple of the Austrian diet; there are actually stores called “Speckeria”, which basically translates as “bacon emporium”. Imagine an entire store devoted completely to bacon; this is the world in which I wish to live.
We tried the local varieties, but the best wines in Austria come from Bordeaux (France).
Speaking of France, there IS compelling evidence that Austria invented the croissant.
I know it’s shocking to point out, but Austrians love efficiency. Restaurant visits are based on your desired timing, not the waiters’.
The drinking age for beer and wine is 16; for liquor, 18. Austrians have a much more civilized outlook on the subject than Americans.
The mountain cheeses of Austria are delicious and varied, although we have not seen anything approaching that most magnificent of all cheeses, Epoisses.
I need to emphasize again that Austrians have entire stores devoted to bacon.

A bacon store

That’s a cheese-stuffed hot-dog, wrapped in bacon

Austria claims to have invented the croissant

We stayed in a tiny little room in a 6-room inn about a 10-minute walk from the center of town, Chalet Verwall (pronounced something close to “Fair-vahl”). How tiny was it? The kitchen was in the bedroom. However, it was pretty far up the luxury scale compared to our normal accommodations, but Lech is that kind of place. C’est la vie (or I guess in this case, “Es ist Leben”). The manager and his wife (Mark and Melanie) were a real treat, and since the rest of the chalet was mostly empty during our two-week visit, we became friends. Mark is quite the chef, and several mornings he baked us fresh bread for breakfast. They even invited us for a home-cooked meal our final night.

Our room, with Mark’s fresh bread and squeezed orange juice

A final highlight from our trip is that a friend from Beaver Creek introduced us to the managing director of the tram and cable-car company in Lech. His job title in German is something like “Oberlech Bergbahn Meister”, which is possibly the world’s coolest job title. He invited us to join him and a group of semi-VIP visitors from Colorado (of all places), so we spent a full day getting a proper local’s tour of the entire St Anton-am-Arlberg interconnected ski areas.

On the VIP tour with Christoph (in the red and black, center)

After Austria it was back on the train to head to our next stop, Val Gardena in the Italian Dolomites (with a one-night stop in Innsbruck to load up on bacon before leaving the country). Hopefully there are no border guards, because I wouldn’t be surprised if taking bacon out of Austria is forbidden. Or perhaps, if I’m lucky, it’s obligatory.