Day 3 – Skiing From GiessenBach
Today’s Blog Entry
On Monday we took the bus to GiessenBach as the starting point for some more cross-country skiing. After putting on our gear we jumped onto the A12 trail and headed north to the village of Scharnitz. Scharnitz is actually on the German border, but checkpoints are a thing of the past after formation of the European Union – we carried our passports anyway just to be safe. When we reached Scharnitz the trail turned back south along the other side of the valley.
After completing the A12 trail (6.3 km) we stopped at the Restaurant Ramona in GiessenBach for, you guessed it, some coffee and apfelkuchen. This re-fueled us for the A11 Bodenalm trail (4.7 km), another gentle cruiser along the valley floor.
One of the interesting sights (and sounds) on this part of the trail was something called “The Audi Experience”. This was a large open air facility used by Audi for driver training under winter conditions. Imagine a free-form hockey rink with 4-5 foot high walls (the depth of the accumulated snow) about 1 mile long with very expensive cars sliding around both in and out of control and you get the picture.
At Bodenalm we picked up the B9 Triendlsage trail (3.2 km), our first red or intermediate trail of the trip. This trail was mostly uphill through the forest and included a few rather challenging steep sections along with some lovely scenery. It was interesting to note that no one else was transiting the trail in the same direction as us (i.e. uphill) – everybody else was headed back down to the valley floor. About half-way up we realized that they probably had the right idea, but then again downhill runs on cross-country skis aren’t always a lot of fun. This trail was so steep in spots that the downhill folks were taking off their skis and walking down to avoid the inevitable yard sale.
The end of the B9 trail left us still a mile or so outside of town at a small ski hill and campground (admittedly an intriguing combination!) but rather than wait for the next bus we just walked home on one of the marked trails. This is one of the few places we’ve visited that maintains a complex network of hiking trails on a year-round basis. Best we could tell they service each trail with a snow thrower mounted on a small tractor after each snow fall. Quite impressive!
After dropping our gear at the apartment and changing from our stylish black ski pants into street clothes we wandered back into Seefeld for a fashionably late lunch at one of the hotel restaurants. We were surprised to see that even though the town was more or less at full occupancy the restaurants were empty in the mid-afternoon. This was fine by us and worked well with both our plans for the day and our admittedly out-of-kilter body clocks.
After lunch we did a little window and grocery shopping and strolled back to our apartment for a quiet evening watching. Because there was so little English programming on cable (the BBC and CNN to be exact) we watched some Mad Men episodes that we had loaded onto our iPad before the trip. Having the iPad with us and reasonably good WiFi service in the apartment was quite helpful not only for entertainment but also for checking weather forecasts, looking at the train schedule, and researching travel options like our next day’s trip to Kitzbuhel.
Today’s Map
Today’s Photos
