The ski season from start to finish

Lunch on the balcony

When you start skiing in November everything is fresh and there is real sense of winter advancing with the snowline down the mountain. The staffers in the huts are particularly pleased to see you, the lift attendants give you a merry ‘gruss gott’ and you don’t have to share the pistes with the hordes.

The palms at Sportgastein

When you finish in April the snowline is edging skywards, the birds are in song and the flowers are starting to appear in the newly revealed green pastures. The snow is soft but on many runs the corduroy lasts all day. The buses, previously every ten minutes, are now giving us time at the bus stop to soak up the afternoon sun. Lunches are leisurely with no fighting for tables, no anxious scanning of the sitting tenants for someone who looks like they are about to pay. Each day the number of available runs reduces but those that have the green light are open range with, very often, no other skier in sight. Spring is definitely in the air and the season is coming to an orderly conclusion.

Party atmosphere at Sportgastein

How different it all is from peak season where punters, just here for a week, are rushing to make the most of their 6 day lift passes. OK the snow is better but it’s also much colder, the days are much shorter and they ski encumbered with goggles, scarves and thermal gear. When I was a 'one weeker' the weather always seemed to change on the day we were due to go home. If it had been cloudy all week with poor visibility it would suddenly burst into sunshine in time for the bus to the airport. Conversely if it had been poor snow then on Friday night there would be a big dump and we would go home in a winter wonderland. We would always go home exhausted but would still feel we had missed out.

Now, its April, season end, skiing is over, forget it!..... only until next November of course.

Afternoon ride

Whoops, just got a call. New snow at Sportgastein, will be on the 9:45 bus!

End of the ski season - Mountains and Molehills in Gastein

Still good snow on H2

The season is still ploughing on until the 25^th April on the Schlossalm, even later in Sportgastein, but we hung up our hats (helmets) on the 8^th April – that’s it, job done. 

We started to get a few hints and clues that time was up.... here's a few.

Sunny afternoon on the balcony

When the lift operators are starting to fall asleep on the job.

TW was in the funicular when the driver dosed off and the machine parked half way down.

When the ski bus driver asks you where you live and then drives you in a 100 seater bus direct to your apartment.  

They normally take a circuit of the town but with a solitary passenger they could take a few short-cuts.

When it’s more comfortable in shorts than in the normal tadpole outfit.

Walking on the Schlossalm

Felt desperately overdressed when we came down to the valley where it was hitting 27 in the shade. Am converted to a helmeted skier but sometimes, if your waiting around, it feels like your head is in a casserole dish!

When you start to think you are a youngster!

I skied for a bit on the last day with a guy of 87!

It was really quite funny sitting on a cable car with about ten other people. The youngest was probably three and the oldest 84 years older, bit of a generation gap I’d say. I skied and rode a few lifts with the ‘old’ chap. He is a relative newbie to Bad Hofgastein, he has only been coming here for twenty years. He clearly still enjoys his skiing and drives himself over from near Vienna for his excursions on the piste. He told me about some of the mountaineering trips he had done in the past but said he doesn’t have the puff for it anymore. Believe me he is not doing too badly. Hope to give him a merry Gruss Gott next year when he gets on the 8:24 bus.

When the farmers start manuring the pistes

It really is amazing how much effort and attention the Austrian farmers give to their hay fields. It’s not an accident of nature that the Gastein Valley is such a green and pleasant place. They muck it, rake it, rake it again. Even the fields with the most precipitous slope get the same treatment. I think they must put crampons on the tractors. The delinquent moles have a great time under the snow but as soon as the melt comes the farmers are out there flattening their hills and attempting, fairly unsuccessfully, to stop then forming more. They certainly make mountains out of their mole hills!

When the mountain huts are starting to close for the season

Now this is definitely the clincher! I'm on my bike!