After a mostly sunny weekend, the weather turned gray again on Monday with low cloud levels and flurries so I took most of it off as a rest day to prepare for what wxers predicted would be a partly sunny Tuesday at an indy ski area I'd visited and liked two years ago: Tschiertschen (CHEER Chen).
Even 24 hours out, they were sticking with that forecast; however, it turned into a surprise powder day with nuking nonstop from bell to bell. Even more interesting, this was more of a North American storm experience in that I was skiing a place that had trees 2/3 up its 3,400-foot vertical AND
you could actually see where you were going, even above treeline:
.
Instead of the normal $45 ticket price, I scored a midweek special from Tschiertschen's website, the "Pistenknüller" (for lack of a better translation, the "trail hit"): $29 gets you an all-day lift ticket PLUS lunch at any of the the five on-mountain restaurants.
My pix are pure storm day = no great visuals, sorry. Half a foot was already down when I got on the lift at 9:45 and it fell at an inch an hour until I stopped at 4 pm. I'd bet that they ended up with a good 15 inches by the time the system moved out mid-evening. There couldn't have been more than 20 people on the entire hill, if that, so every run was fresh tracks unless you were skiing right under a lift. Here's what Tschiertschen looks like on a nice day (I added my photos from two weeks later at the bottom of the thread).
It was difficult to find people to use as photo subjects. Here are the only ones I ran across:
As I was leaving the restaurant; these boarders were arriving, no doubt to take advantage of the Pistenknüller lunch deal:
Mid-afternoon strudel break:
Even 24 hours out, they were sticking with that forecast; however, it turned into a surprise powder day with nuking nonstop from bell to bell. Even more interesting, this was more of a North American storm experience in that I was skiing a place that had trees 2/3 up its 3,400-foot vertical AND
you could actually see where you were going, even above treeline:
.
Instead of the normal $45 ticket price, I scored a midweek special from Tschiertschen's website, the "Pistenknüller" (for lack of a better translation, the "trail hit"): $29 gets you an all-day lift ticket PLUS lunch at any of the the five on-mountain restaurants.
My pix are pure storm day = no great visuals, sorry. Half a foot was already down when I got on the lift at 9:45 and it fell at an inch an hour until I stopped at 4 pm. I'd bet that they ended up with a good 15 inches by the time the system moved out mid-evening. There couldn't have been more than 20 people on the entire hill, if that, so every run was fresh tracks unless you were skiing right under a lift. Here's what Tschiertschen looks like on a nice day (I added my photos from two weeks later at the bottom of the thread).
It was difficult to find people to use as photo subjects. Here are the only ones I ran across:
As I was leaving the restaurant; these boarders were arriving, no doubt to take advantage of the Pistenknüller lunch deal:
Mid-afternoon strudel break:
