Gargellen AT + Madrisa CH: 02/06/15

jamesdeluxe

Administrator
Day 6: Gargellen, AT to Klosters, CH
Gargellen is a small (compared to everything else) but interesting ski area from which you can start or end a number of ski tours. Since I'd never really done anything like that, I figured that it’s now or never and made plans to do the Madrisa Tour, which takes you over the border into Switzerland and back. You can see the beginning in the upper right corner and the end in the upper left corner:

Panorama_2012-13.jpg


For experienced turn-earners, Madrisa is rated as technically easy, but keep in mind that I only had six lift-served days under my belt before leaving for Austria, and then five bell-to-bell days on this trip, so my legs were hardly in top shape to say nothing about my level of endurance. Add to that a foggy day with flat light and this resort hacker had a nice list of excuses. As Admin and Co. can attest (Jitterbug, i.e. the Jamesdeluxe Memorial Bootpack), it's rarely a pretty sight, but I finished.

My guide Jonny Marinac sized me up, LOL, and we headed to the mid-mountain restaurant to look at maps, discuss the route, snow conditions, avalanche danger (Level 3), and the terrain that we could safely ski/skin through.
Planning.jpg


We also took a look at the display that explained the history of the Madrisa Tour and the 40 years of cooperation between Austria and Switzerland to keep the route accessible for people on both sides of the border:
Display.jpg


From the top lift, we skied down and started our way up a little more than 1,000 verts:
Clicking In.jpg


Throughout, Jonny gave tips about proper form to avoid tiring inefficient movements, of which I had plenty. He normally would have zoomed up the track in no time, I’m sure, but made sure to stay within sight of me. It was pretty obvious that he'd guided every level of guest imaginable and had plenty of patience:
Looking Up.jpg


We made it to the top by 11 am, where there's a Switzerland border sign:
Sign 1.jpg


Sign 2.jpg


And started the 3,300 vertical-foot descent. Given that this is a popular route, there would be some isolated tracks on a sunny day, but with the fog and recent snow, it was soft, untracked knee-deep the whole way down:
Jonny 1.jpg


jonny wide.jpg


Jonny 2.jpg


Me:
me.jpg


View from the bottom:
View From Bottom.jpg


A walking encyclopedia of the region, he could identify and/or tell stories about every village, peak, and rock formation on this route and dozens of others:
Pointing.jpg


We skated into sleepy St. Antönien for a break:
St. Antonien.jpg


We took a taxi into Klosters and rode up the Madrisa side via a gondola followed by a chair and t-bar.
3842e26375.jpg


Finally above the inversion, everyone was happy:
t-bar.jpg


Chubby Bird.jpg


It was here that we nailed the best powder of the tour: south-facing but superbly preserved. Unfortunately, I was whooping it up too much to take photos. We finished the day with a 1,200-vert skin up the other side of the Madrisa -- back into high winds, fog, and snow -- before reaching the border back into Austria:
Austria Sign.jpg


We embarked on another long flat-light powder run back to Gargellen, by which time I was clearly dragging. 7.5 hours after departure, we stopped at a base restaurant for drinks and pizza.
 
Last edited:
Richard and I skied Madrisa a morning in 2013, as we were staying just a few blocks from there in Klosters. By 11AM Richard was ready to leave due to the lifts being mostly T-bars. I was ready to leave because with the sunny exposure anything off-piste had crusty or refrozen snow. viewtopic.php?t=10772

The Davos/Klosters ski areas are not interconnected, sort of like Chamonix in that respect. Madrisa is not where the action is, so no surprise it would be really good on a powder day.

jamesdeluxe":mieop86m said:
Thanks again to Jonny for being a fantastic Bergführer. A great experience, especially for those in better shape than me. 8-[
2,200 vertical of skinning total. That's about the same as the two best days of our Antarctic tour, and near the limit of what I wanted to do in one day on that trip since it was 6 consecutive days. Altitude can be an issue, as on last year's Schwarztor, where there wasn't much elevation gain, but it was 2 hours at over 12,000 feet. I think James topped out a bit over 8,000 based on that map.

I will have to say james leads a charmed life for scoring powder in the Alps. You get some leeway with the powder lasting a few days after a storm, but on the other hand it's almost impossible to see during the storm. So you need:
1) A big enough storm for powder
2) Being there immediately after but not during it
3) Not having the wind or sun degrade the snow

I've had 4 trips to the Alps. The first 2 failed criterion #1; it had been awhile (a month in the case of La Grave) since a major storm. The third trip had a small storm in Davos producing one powder day and a big one in Andermatt that made off-piste skiing impossible and eventually closed most of the lifts. The 4th trip in Zermatt was awesome but seems fairly average by james' track record.
 
Tony Crocker":1gkigzlb said:
Madrisa is not where the action is, so no surprise it would be really good on a powder day.
There was another t-bar above where I took the inversion photo and that's where all the completely untracked was. If we hadn't needed to scoot back to Gargellen to beat darkness (due to my aforementioned modest uphill speed), I would've stayed the entire afternoon in Madrisa.
 
Back
Top