Flims/Laax, Switzerland

It had been a dry spell for most of Europe during the last months of 2001. A number of high pressures sat over the continent and kept a large part of the moisture away. Not good for early season conditions. It was with some trepidation, and reports of rock hard pistes that we set off for Laax.

Swiss efficiency being all it's reputed to be, the only delays we had were on the EasyJet flight in to and out of London-Luton airport. But once in Switzerland, trains, and buses all left and arrived according to the timetables. Amazing.

We stayed at the Hotel Seehof, a small hotel situated just off the main road in Laax Dorf (dorf being German for village). The "Dorf" part is helpful for first timers as there are a number of villages with the Laax prefix. The hotel was just what we wanted, warm, clean and quiet with good beer and an excellent chef. If you want to party, you're better off in Flims where things go off.

Oh, did I mention it was snowing? That's right, the dry spell ended the day we arrived, and it was snowing all the way from Zurich to Laax, and it still snowed that night. And yes, as I recall, it was still snowing the next day too. That meant our first day on the mountain had reduced visibility but the pistes were covered in a reasonable amount of fresh powder. What more can you ask for? At the end of day 1, I managed to break both my bindings without even doing anything stupid. More info here.

The next 2 days were fine and sunny, which enabled us to get our bearings and find our way around. Also due to the reasonable amount of powder, we went off the piste and got some greats runs in. Anywhere off Crap Sogn Gion was good going, and the run down to the bottom of Plaun in particular.

When finally they opened up La Siala, and I eventually worked out the nasty traverse points to get to the lift, there was some even better stuff up the top. Worth knowing though that it's button lifts all the way, so if you're not comfortable on them, you may not make it... some of it was... umm... interesting.

The next couple of days were a lull I guess. The weather was hanging around, and couldn't decide what to do. It snowed lightly quite often, but then there were the odd hours of very strong winds. Strong enough at one point that they had to shut down Plaun and the cable car behind it. The pisted runs scoured by the gales were nasty. Very hard going with pure ice in places. I need sharper edges!

One day, we were over the Flims side of the mountain, and decided that we'd ride all the way to Flims to check the place out. As we dropped down, the pistes got busier and busier. The base station at Flims was heaving with people, and the queue for the buses was immense. No problem, as we had planned to take the chairs back up into the mountain and ride back to Laax.

No such luck. Whilst we'd been playing up top, a storm had moved in on the other side forcing them to close the lifts. They weren't uploading anyone from Flims. It took me an hour to walk back to Laax. I guess I was lucky. Chatting to a couple of Americans living over there, they were waiting 90 minutes before they got a bus, and then it was a sardine ride. Somewhere the efficiency system broke down. I guess it can't always be perfect.

Finally it decided to snow again. Hard. It dumped all day, and it dumped all night. We got the first chair up and were the first to ride down the "backcountry slope" Curnius. The powder was knee deep, but it was cloudy and windy. In fact it was so windy that it only took 2 hours for our first tracks to be completely covered up.

The next day, same chair up, it was very foggy at mid station, but that soon gave way to sun shine. The slope we were tracking out the day before had zero sign of human presence. Amazingly we got first and fresh again, and the powder was even deeper. Ah yes, it was sweet.

The final day was sunny, and due to a couple of freeze thaws, the powder wasn't so good. But I think we'd had our fair share.

All in all, we had a great time. The Flims/Laax area has some fun terrain, but there's nothing that's really steep (apart from the cliffs).