Ski Holiday - Part 2

This is the view from the Nursery slope - pretty & impressive!

On Monday, we were back on Reiteralm again. We started the morning with a bit of a refresh on the nursery slope before heading off on some of the easier blue runs to practise turns and traversing. This also involved more button lifts & skiing without poles - pretending we were bouncing basketballs to make sure we were leaning the right direction to turn. After our lesson Paul suggested we return to the Blue run we had been on the day before, next to the gondala station, to try out our new skills. There definately was an improvement in all of us! Much less falling over & Tim & Beth were even trying the red part of the slope by the end of the day.

That evening after dinner & the meeting we had the pleasure to be in the perfect location to watch the local ski show from our bedroom balcony. The Brinds & Richardsons came to join us with Glühwein & hot chocolate in flasks to watch. There were synchronised skiers, young skiers & boarders doing jumps, demonstrations of traditional skiing equipment & techniques, skidoos & motorbikes driving up the Black slope (the skidoo pulling someone!). We also saw two paragliders landing at the bottom of the slope & 5 dancing piste bashers.

On Tuesday we (the Beginners with Paul) caught the local bus to Planai, while everyone else skied across. It was a greyer morning because it had been snowing a little overnight but this also meant we had lovely fresh snow to ski on. We seemed to be one of the first there & was so peaceful. Here we experienced camel humps (& tried to get to the end with out picking up too much speed) & T-bar lifts. At the end of the lesson Paul offered to bring us back across the mountains to Haus at the end of the day if we wanted to...

We had more hot chocolate after our lesson before getting back on the skis to enjoy the freedom that our building confidence gave us. There were oakhallers appearing through out the morning & Sarah, Chris & Beth caught up with us just before lunch. We did some more runs with them - what should have been the last one before heading back Chrispy & Fi managed to fall off the T-bar...there really is a knack to those things!!

The time came to start skiing home so Paul, Tim, Fiona & Beth(T) headed off. The views were amazing & some of the slopes very intimidating but Paul expertly & calmly talked us through it all & helped us. The journey involved Fiona's first red run which of course meant there was some falling over to be done but all in all it felt like a real achievement. We rode a long chair lift up from where the Planai & Hauser Kaibling meet up to the top of HK where we stopped to refuel - Hot Chocs & apple strudels very needed!

We skied down from there to the gondola station by which stage we were exhausted! Paul left us to catch a lift for the last part of the journey while he skied home. One highlight had to be getting our print-out for the ski passes which told us about where we had skied during the day :-

• Downhill distance: ca 20km,
• Lifts used: 14,
• Lift distance: 10km,
• Vertical distance 2953m!!

Not bad for our 3rd day skiing! Well Fiona was impressed!