As mentioned in my previous post, I'm finally travelling abroad again following the pandemic! And when visiting Zürich in Switzerland for a long-weekend, there was no way that we could not dedicate one day of it to go to the Alps and enjoy the epic slopes!
I haven't visited the slopes for 10 years following a shoulder dislocation I had when falling on a "big jump" 12 years ago. Then, I basically performed "half a front flip", and landed directly on my left shoulder without anything else touching the ground first to damped the impact. Falling like that from at least 4 meters at high speed and onto packed hard snow that was borderline ice resulted in a serious injury.
But while I'm more careful and selective in my activities now than I was then, as I don't want to take unnecessary risks, I also refuse to let it limit my life too much. So I was quite looking forward to snowboarding again, and putting that ghost behind me! I also hadn't snowboarded for a while simply because I enjoy cross-country skiing so much! And when my family is also mostly into cross-country, and they are the people I'm primarily around during winter holidays, then naturally I would end up doing mostly cross-country.
But the Alps in Europe are quite different to the mountains in Norway in that they are much taller and steeper. Thus, you get slopes that are far longer, and where you can ski or snowboard down for a very long time before needing to get in a queue to take the lift or ca le-cars back up. Add a significant view on top of that and you can see why I had been looking forward to this for a long time!
I also pleasantly surprised by how quickly I picked up my former snowboarding skills again. After just one round of trial and error whilst getting comfortable, it was as if I had never had a break from snowboarding! Which made me really happy! So after that, I began pushing the limits as I am used to, and went through all the high difficulty routes whilst experimenting with going down at a faster and faster pace while adding a few jumps with grabs or 180s here and there. Being playful like that puts me in a real flow state, and I am able to just forget about thinking and live in the moment trusting my body and instincts to just do the right things. Loved it!
The slopes that we went to were Flumserberg, which is just an hour of train south from Zürich. So we got up early in the morning, and went straight to the train station followed by a long cable-car ride up into the mountains.
Flumserberg ski village sits at some 1600 meters above sea level, while the highest point of the slopes are at an impressive 2222 meters. The best part is that there are numerous different paths down, all leading down to different lifts back up. Thus, you both have a luxury of options of where to go down, as well as short queue times at the lifts because the visitors are divided across several lifts rather than all arriving down to one bottle neck. The combination of long lasting rides down, and short time spent in queues to get back up, means you get to spend most of the time actually snowboarding, rather than waiting as you do in many other smaller slopes.
The nature and scener was also spectacular! The lake Walensee is visible from many places in the slope. The height and steepness of the mountains also mean that you see different seasons as layers in the mountains. With green at the bottom and snow at the top. It really is beautiful!
But as is often the case, the weather is the main determant of a good day in the slopes. And boy did we have perfect weather! The view was made even prettier with the blue skies and sun reflecting off the snow and lake. The temperature felt comfortable despite it being minus degrees in the height. And the sight was crystal clear.
But just as important : It made the after-ski experience epic! At just above 2000 meters above sea level, there was a large panorama restaurant and bar with a huge rooftop outdoor area. Seating hundreds of guests and a live band, it was the perfect place to come for some food and a few drinks (which turned into many drinks), while enjoying the sun, german music, atmosphere of people dancing on the floor and on the tables, all surrounded by epic views. If you've never been to an after-ski event like that in the Alps, then you'll have to put it on your to-do list!!
Needless to say, we both felt even more brave whilst skiing and snowboarding down the slopes after the drinks😅.