Love it or hate it

The thing about winter sports is: you either love it or hate it. I haven't met anyone in between. And I am one of the persons that just loves it.
Although I didn't grow up with skiing trips when I was young, I did want to try it out. When I finally was making some money after getting my first real job, I booked a skiing trip with a friend of mine. We went to Sölden and booked some skiing lessons. We just loved the combination of being outside all day, being active and also the atmosphere after skiing 🍺
After that first trip, a couple of more followed. But then, a lot of years later, my kids were born. And going on a skiing trip with young kids is just not very convenient. So we stopped going on skiing trips.
And this pause lasted quite a few years. It was just 3 years ago that some friends had the plan to go on a skiing trip again, but then with kids.
Since then we have been saving money to go on a skiing trip with the family every year. This year we went to Matrei, Austria.

Matrei, Austria

Matrei is a town in Osttirol in Austria. It is located in the Hohe Tauern National Park. In the years before we went to some larger skiing resorts, but this year we decided to go for a less crowded one. The ski area is a bit smaller than we were used to, but since we went with three families that have more and less experiences skiers (my kids for instance are still in skiing classes), this smaller area is perfect.
We arrived on our destination on a Saturday. There was no snow in the town, but the surrounding mountains looked very good. The village itself is at an altitude of 975 meters, but the skiing slopes go up to 2.426 meters. High and cold enough.
We checked in in our hotel which had a beautiful view on the town from the balcony.
After that we went to the town to rent our gear and book some lessons for the kids.

Skiing!

On Sunday was our first day of skiing. The sky was clear blue and it was sunny. We actually had quite a sunny week, except for the Wednesday when it was cloudy and snowing. Later more on that.
The gondola in the valley takes you up 1.234 meters to an altitude of 2.167 meters. From there you can still see the green valley, but also the perfect white slopes and the magnificent white mountain peaks in the background. It's such a marvelous view!

As I mentioned before, we were very lucky with the weather. Skiing is so much nicer when the sun is shining. Not only that is feels less cold (although it is below 0 degrees C), but you also see more depth and bumps in the snow.

One of the things I like about skiing are the views. Everywhere you look around are massive mountains with trees and snow. There is no industry to be seen (apart from a ski-lift off course).

The slopes in the skiing area go up to 2.426 meter. On the highest point you are above the tree level, so you only see snow and mountains. From the top you have a lovely view on the Großglockner, the largest mountain in Austria with a height of 3.798 meters.

And then back down. As you can clearly see on the picture below, it was quite calm. It has been like this all week. This is really not how we know it from the other resorts that we have been. Except from the area where the skiing lessons were given, most of the slopes were very calm like this. The two skiers in the front are my kids by the way. In their third year of skiing they managed to go down on the most difficult black slopes with me. They really made some good progress.
The further down we went, the snow conditions got worse. There was a slope that lead directly to the hotel, which was really cool since we didn't need to take the skibus back, but this slope became very slushy and therefor quite hard to go down. We were able to take it though, but it was quite challenging.

As I mentioned before, Wednesday was a bad day. It was very cloudy in the village already and when we went up the mountain, it didn't get any better. It was even snowing a bit, which was good in one way since the slopes could use some fresh snow. Only skiing when it's snowing isn't nice nor safe. Although it became a bit better than on the picture below, we did made it a short day. Also because it is way colder without the sun.

The two days after that were just perfect! A fresh layer of snow and two nice and sunny days. Since the kids only had lessons for the first couple of days we could take them with us in the area. I've set the following photo as desktop background of my laptop since this really takes me back of the skiing slopes of Matrei.

We really enjoyed our trip and we actually fell in love with Matrei. The calmness of the area. The beautiful nature and great skiing slopes and a nice hotel made us think about coming back here again next year.

And now for some action! I've also made a couple of action movies while skiing down. Here you can see me in action from a POV perspective. Enjoy!

About FriendlyMoose

I'm an amateur photographer with a love for indoor gardening, craft beer, and cycling. As the owner of the Cycling Community and the creator of the Topcomment initiative, I focus on fostering engagement and bringing like-minded people together.
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