Yesterday I went skiing at the Mölltaler Gletscher in Kärnten (Carinthia, Austria). Currently most ski resorts are already closed for the season but this particular resort is open year round because of its high elevation. Overall I can highly recommend going here and I’m definitely going back tomorrow once I’ve given my legs a rest!
The Mölltaler Gletscher is a bit of a drive from where I’m staying right now though you can also stay in the adjacent towns and catch the bus. I didn’t mind though because the drive through the various mountain passes with hairpin turns is a joy in and of itself. I also made the drive useful by listening to the final bit of the Harry Potter und der Stein der Weisen audiobook and starting on Die Kammer des Schreckens.
Once at the parking I saw the place was rather busy despite it being in the middle of nowhere. From the parking we took an underground train up to the actual ski resort. The change in scenery was complete. At the valley station of the train it is green and a balmy 15°C but a little under ten minutes later you exit in a different frigid world made entirely of ice, rock and snow. The train goes every half hour and there are no benches so unless you fancy standing still in your ski shoes for up to half a hour waiting for the next one you better hurry!
Though I did manage to shoot some scenery most of the day was super cloudy. As in, I was literally skiing in the clouds and couldn’t see much of anything beyond the tips of my ski’s. That made it sort of exciting. When going down piste no. 10 I even accidentally left the piste. Can’t really be blamed for that though:
Later checking the map I saw I probably would have ended up on a variant route so I wasn’t doing anything super crazy. But given that the avalanche risk lights were blinking when I got back down at the end of the day, indicating very high avalanche risk outside designated pistes, I’m glad I stuck to those as much as possible (well “designated” might be a bit generous in some cases!).
Unlike what the website said pistes 1 through 4 were unfortunately closed off because of avalanche risk, as was the upper section of piste 15. So I didn’t get to go to the highest point at Shareck peak at 3122m. Still the rest of the resort was open and the snow quality was great, not icy at all like I had expected. The slopes were extensive and I did all that were open (some several times). Pistes 7 and 8 were basically the same slope as there was only a thin strip of unprepared snow between the two and you could easily switch between the two at any point along the descent. The ticket price was also quite reasonable.
This resort is great for free riding too. Not only is it marketed as such, from the tracks in the snow one could see people often do this, though yesterday I only saw two folks actually skiing outside the designated pistes. Perhaps that’s also why the Fußgänger passes are so expensive (to basically tax anyone going touring). Obviously given the weather I didn’t go in for this.
The Mölltaler Gletscher is not suitable for beginning skiers though. There is only one “blue” piste and that one didn’t feel blue at all given the amount of moguls that had formed in the final section. The other pistes were easier in my opinion, even the black ones. The map indicates some training areas around the end of the train station but those don’t have the facilities to learn how to ski either (something like a small pulling rope for example).
Geologically speaking the area is also rather beautiful with copious examples of exposed strata, frost weathering and icicles.
New gear
Now I don’t need any additional excuses to go skiing beyond “the mountain is there you know” but in this case I also recently bought some new gear that I was just dying to try out.
For as long as I can remember I’ve been skiing with second and third hand gear which was fine I suppose. But I can tell you after trying this stuff out, it is a world apart from having skies and shoes that actually fit you exactly.
Now I’m not in the habit of spending a truly large sum of money on a whim but this is probably a good investment long term. For one my previous set of ski’s was well over thirty years old. And while ski’s can go for a long time the amount of damage on them was starting to look concerning. No amount of waxing could manage to cover that up.
They also just weren’t the right size. Ski’s for novices ought to be about 10 centimetres shorter than one’s own height but mine were even shorter than that. My new ones are considerably longer and provide a lot more stability and a smoother ride. Mine are still a bit shorter than I am but not by much. Sure that makes jump turns more difficult but if I find myself in a couloir where I actually need to do that I’m screwed anyway.
My new gear also just has more options. Last holiday I went tour-skiing for the first time and that was definitely something I want to be doing more of in the future. I had to rent gear for that though since my old gear only allows for normal skiing. That can quickly become more expensive than just buying suitable gear so that’s another reason to treat myself to something new. In the pictures below you can see the climbing skins (no baby seals were harmed in making them), bindings that allow for walking, poles that can be set to different lengths and the shoes that can be fit to the climbing pins in the bindings.
Fun aside, the German border police apparently thought it was super suspicious that my car was full of long bags in late April and they stopped me at the border. Got held up for a search which lasted for well over half an hour where they opened up just about everything I had. “Do you have weapons or drugs? Do you have rifles?” They looked genuinely surprised to find ski gear in the long bags in my car. I’m sure my squirrely behaviour made them even more suspicious (I had never before been detained by the police so yeah I was a bit shook). I probably fit a profile or something. We’ll see if I get detained again on my return trip. Edit: luckily I wasn’t.
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