Axalp, CH: 03/12/18

jamesdeluxe

Administrator
After picking up my wife at Zurich Airport early Monday morning, we drove 90 minutes south to our headquarters for the next five days, the lakeside village of Brienz (pronounced BREENTZ), where the mountains come right down to the water. Besides its beauty and reasonable lodging prices, you can reach two ski areas (Hasliberg and Axalp) in 15 minutes and the Jungfrau ski areas in 40, so it made sense logistically too. Following two cloudy days, it was nice to see the sun poke through occasionally:
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My wife was wiped out from the flight so she decided to relax at the hotel:
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I wanted to do a bit of skiing so about 3,000 vertical feet above the lake, just below the rock outcropping at the top, is the local ski area Axalp:
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A comparatively small area with a fixed chair and a t-bar covering its 1,800 vertical feet:
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No tremendously challenging terrain, but pleasant cruising and scenics. The only other skiers I ran into were high-school kids who take the bus up from the village:
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Views of bright green Lake Brienz down below from a few vantage points:
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After 2.5 hours, I headed back down to meet my wife for drinks and the sun had finally come out:
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A clearer view of where I'd skied a few minutes earlier:
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You may recall that during our visit to the Jungfrau region five years ago, my wife and I stayed several nights in the picturesque but oddly affordable lakeside village of Brienz in the report above. It was almost wiped out yesterday by a landslide. On an off-day, we walked all around the town and in front of the church with the yellow steeple.

It wasn't a surprise as authorities were warning residents about it five weeks ago. This Guardian article claims "today it has fewer than 100 residents." Unless they're measuring in some unique way that lowballs the number of inhabitants, that can't be true. It felt like a classic small Alps village with its own train station.

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You may recall that during our visit to the Jungfrau region five years ago my wife and I stayed several nights in the picturesque but affordable lakeside village of Brienz in the report above. It was almost wiped out yesterday by a landslide. On an off-day, we walked all around the town and along the lake so I recognize the locations.

Wow - just missed it.

The northern suburb villages of Courmayeur - like Entreves - also get warnings of potential glacier ice falls, but not on this scale.
 
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