Alpen Skiing For The Win

Zermatt Skiing January 3, 2011

Link to Zermatt skiing map

The day started bright and early at 7:30am. We donned our ski gear which took a while because of our extensive suits. We headed down to eat breakfast more bread with coffee this time though. Then it was off to the main gondolas. We floated up the mountain side in the shadow of the Matterhorn, oh yeah almost forgot about that. The Matterhorn is sooo cool, way cooler than pictures make it look. Well then we made to the top of the first peak Gornergrat, 10,132ft tall. We made our first run and I knew it was going to be an amazing day. The Alps offer amazing views, skiing, and pretty much awesome everything. We continued on Gornergrat, Pete was showing signs of improvement but still using modified pizza and going REALLY slow. So I left him in the dust for a run (it was planned, I didn’t just piece out). I skied some red trails (Europe colors differ from ours: blue-easy, red-medium, and black is still hard). I skied all the way from Gornergrat to Riffelberg and down to Furi where the main gondola was. It was a really fun route a little hairy at times but I was fine, good thing Pete didn’t come though. Then we decided to get lunch at the Riffelberg Restaurant. We found out the hard way not to that. We paid $25 for a meal; it was good but not that good. We did a little more skiing on Gornergrat and then we headed to the other side of the mountain, where we skied Trokener Steg and the Plateau above Trokener. This was higher than Gornergrat and a little more difficult we also encountered the strangest lift ever called a T-bar. You sit on this little bar and you get pulled up the mountain. You are still skiing though, just uphill and that’s what makes it weird. This was Pete’s last run and he headed down on the gondola. I’d say he did pretty well for skiing in the Alps the second day he’d ever skied. This is when my coolest run of the whole day started I skied from 11,420ft to 5,315ft. That’s right over a mile in vertical drop alone. It took me almost 1 and half hours and it was soooo awesome!! I returned to the Hostel at 4pm got my boots and skied down to return my skis and boots. We just chilled for awhile because we were so beat, but our day was far from over. We had some more bread and some >1 beer (only 2 things in Switzerland that are worth the money). We eventually decided to go out. The receptionist told us of a popular bar and night club called the Poppola club. We headed in that direction and on the way we decided we needed food. We stopped at a little pizzeria, again a ton of money for not enough stuff. We finally headed over to the bar, got some $7 beers and chilled for awhile. The bar and night club excursion lasted way to long and again we spent way too much money, Zermatt sucks for that.