As I was preparing at home to head up the mountain, my friend who lives there looked outside and said 'Nehhh, it is way too foggy still. I will stay here for a bit and see you guys up there'
Now I recognize this from when I was living in Switzerland myself. The conditions have to be almost nearly to perfect for going up, otherwise you might as well wait for a better moment. After all, when you live in the mountains, the oppertunity is always there.
But since I am a visitor this time I want to make the most of my trip and I don't care about some clouds...as long as I am outside it is all fine.
This time it was totally different.
With heading up with the first gondola the sight was not really that good. That is often the case as you are going steep up and elevating a lot, that is where you head through the clouds. This is all normal. Very often the case is how higher you get, how better the sight and less clouds there are.
Then with the next chairlift up I already had the idea that it wasn't impriving a lot as you can see on the snap here above. You were hardly able to see two chairs in front of you, and the poles were totally disappeared in the mist.
Still....the moral was high
But it got a lot worse even
Especially on days like these I really like the fact that I don't like to go skiing along. To me this is still a sport in the mountain where the elements and nature rule, and getting injured is easy. So it is was me and my other friend up the hill.
When we started our descent the sight was not so flashy but this got worse by the second. Considering this was my first run of the season this also meant that the technique was not totally up to par as I would call it.
With every curve the sight got worse and worse and the shift between the colour of the snow and the colour of the sky got less and less.
At a certain point I saw this little signage thingy which tells you there is a junction.
Looking beyond the little pole there was white sky and white snow, not able to see at all if and how steep the part behind this was. There might as well have been a ravine there, but you wouldn't know.
Looking left I saw white snow and white skies and no idea where to go and looking right I saw white slopes and white skies and no idea where to go. My friend and I said to ourselves 'let's just wait for a bit here. That seems like the safest thing to do, until we get some more visuals and this cloud will pass'. Remember...it was predicted that the sky would open up and the clouds would leave so that was a good thing to just wait for.
And we waited.....and waited...
...and waited. This was quite a busy day and people were passing by a lot. They also had no idea on where to go and what to do. I saw a group of people think and choose as they went to the left side. There they found another ledge to wait on as one of them though they had the right route, but ended up walking there.
Because of that there were people on the left side, other thought 'hey...that must be the right way to go' and also headed to the left. I could only think of 'Lemmings' following each other and walking in the ravine (you know Lemmings right? The classic game?).
So people were waiting on the next point as well and no one had an idea where to go. How long would this take? We had been standing there for around 15-30 minutes just waiting and the fog would not leave.
Now I know the area for a bit and I also know we were about half way of the slope and that there aren't any ravines or crevasses on this part. The worst thing that could happen is that you would injure yourself because the snow is different or more steeper than you had expected. But no falling to death in the abyss.
We decided to head out, stay close to each other and be on the look for any other signage.
Somewhere in the distance I saw an orange stick and when reahcing that one, in the distance I saw a next one. Progression!
And then all of a sudden. Trees! We were at the tree line!
Now this sounds not as something significant, but seeing trees means you can see depth and contrast all of a sudden and descending was easy again. A minute later we reached the mountain hut and went to chill inside until the fog went away.
Again this is all fun and games as you know there is nothing crazy around the white corner. But also skiing areas have a lot of areas which are not all secured and you have no idea what you are not seeing then. This situation turned out just fine, but I had no idea that would be waiting just for for the fog to leave. And this was even a short period of time, often you see people get rescued after multiple hours because there are no clear visuals due to weather
Mountains and weather is just stuff to be cautious off...