The 3 hour flight to Calgary Feb. 16 gave me the time to write this long delayed report.
Sunday morning It took about an hour to take the train down to Lauterbrunnen from Wengen, tram up to Grutschalp, second train to Winteregg and finally its chairlift before we could start skiing. As forecast our second day in the Jungfrau region was overcast, so this was our first direct view of the famous trio of Jungfrau peaks.
We made our way with just more chair ride, Almiboden, to the two stage Schilthornbahn tram. Approaching the Birg mid station:
The Piz Gloria station on top of Schilthorn is being renovated.
Observation deck on the backside:
Piz Gloria was noteworthy for its use for six months of filming On Her Majesty’s Secret Service in 1969.
The film company helped pay for its construction.
Liz with disguised James Bond cutout on the deck:
Hanging glaciers on the northern alpine ridge west of the Jungfrau peaks:
View north to the European plain with Trunersee at right center:
On the deck with view east:
We had soup and strudel inside at the revolving restaurant.
The stationary ceiling shows distances to various world scenic locations.
As a former marketing person, Liz thought this display was the ultimate in product placement.
Downstairs was an exhibit from On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, the most ski intensive of the James Bond movies.
Around 1PM we’re ready to ski down from the Schilthorn.
Liz on #10 piste:
It’s relatively steep, but high, north facing and with limited skier density the best snow in the Jungfrau region.
Near end of #10 piste:
The light doesn’t look great, but it was in fact better than when we were on the Schilthorn sightseeing deck.
The weather soon brightened more.
The pistes are in the bottom of the valley leading to the Riggli chair. The traverse track on the far side will be used by the Inferno racers in another week. The Inferno is a Chinese downhill type race from the Schilthorn all the way down 6,000+ vertical feet to Lauterbrunnen in good years though probably to Winteregg this year.
I took a couple of laps on Riggli to check out the off piste, which had some leftover powder below a frozen granular upper section. Meanwhile Liz took the Thrill Walk at the Birg mid-station.
For extra thrills there are a glass bottom section,
A crawl through net,
And a wire tightrope.
Liz bypassed the latter two wearing ski boots.
Leaving Birg, the weather cleared considerably for the famous view of Eiger, Monch and Jungfrau.
Zoom view of Jungfrau glaciers:
We skied laps on the Muttieren and Kandahar chairs with good snow conditions.
The #16 piste descends through a gap below Kandahar.
We skied down to Murren to check out the Schiltgrat chair. View from near top of it:
The bottom of piste #25 had the worst snow we experienced in the Jungfrau, severely scraped manmade, shaded around 3:30PM.
We skied into Murren and exited via the odd combination of funicular, surface lift and chair, then to Winteregg to repeat train, tram and train to return to Wengen. Late afternoon view of Lauberhorn area below the Eiger and Monch:
I skied 16,900 vertical.
Our hotel Alpenrose in Wengen around 6PM:
The Alpenrose gave us vouchers to store boots and skis at Ski Central near Wengen’s Mannlichen tram. This made it easy to shop and wander around town after skiing before the 10 minute walk back to the hotel for our half board dinners.
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