Klosters : As good as ever.

Henny Bill Jane

 I was back in Klosters again.  When people ask me- which is the best place to ski off piste from the lift system   I have no hesitation in saying Klosters.  Its terrain, quality of snow is significantly better than any where else I have skied.

Mind you this trip got off to a bad start: No sooner had we left the top of the Gotscshna Cable car - Possibly five minutes into the skiing when out of no where an elderly women [ out of control] skied into Bill.  Whilst he remained upright , She did not. Instead she took an almighty crash,  knocking her self out smashing her face up and breaking her arm.  We called the Piste Patrol who in turn called in a helicopter and whisked her away.

So the first hour had not been straight forward.  Nevertheless for us, at least ,the day got better.  We enjoyed incredible skiing especially off the piste and into the Casanapass area and then down through the heavenly Conterser Schwendi meadows, where the skiing was through deep untracked snow - even more amazing because it hadn't snowed for a week.

It was then back to the iconic Wynegg Hotel which was our base.

The next day the weather was over cast , so inorder to avoid the flat light we headed for the tree skiing of the Chalbersaas woods.  Again if there is better powder tree skiing, then I dont know what it looks like. 

Bill enjoying the fabled Chalbersass tree skiing.

We emergerd from the trees and joined the piste back to Klosters, where now the sky had cleared . We again took the Gotschana Cable Car and then skied off-piste all the way down to Wolfgang for lunch where we met by several hunderd heavily armed soliders getting ready for the Davos Economic Forum.

Lunch was eye wateringly expensive, but to add insult to injury swiss restaurants also now charge you for tap water.  Eight Swiss francs.  Which is roughly eight pounds for a fucking litre of tap water. 

On our third day we skied another of Klosters fabled off piste runs the Gmeinboda.  This is done from the  top of the old T bar just north of the Paresenhutte.   It starts with a ten miunute walk with the skis carried on the rucksack.

Henny Bill Jane on the short climb

The top section was a bit wind blown, yet as we skied down we found lots of wonderful untracked snow which continued all the way through the trees and meadows.  

Summit ridge of the Gmeinboda

Ibex on the ridge 

After lunch we rode the lifts back to the top of the resort and then finsihed by another long run down to Wolfgang where we were planning to take the train back to Klosters.  However a combination of not reading the time table correctly [Bill] and the rare occurrance of a Swiss train being cancelled, mean t we had to hole up in the Bar for several beers which almost resulted in us missing the train again...