Pizol, CH: 03/08/19

jamesdeluxe

Administrator
For my final destination trip of the season, I took advantage of a late November sale on United FF awards for 45K miles instead of the usual 60K and booked a trip to Zürich, which I've flown into so many times now, it's starting to feel like a European Salt Lake City for me. Weather reports were a bit all over the place so I decided to stick to higher elevation areas and the canton of Graubünden in southeastern Switzerland.

Here's the road map: the same route down and back:
CH map.png


I was booted up by 10:30. The ski area, which is shaped like a horseshoe with a huge steep valley in between. When the valley runs are open, that's a 5,600-foot T2B vertical drop; however, due to the recent warm spell that took out the snow at the bottom, "only" the upper 3,900 verts were open:

pistenplan.jpg


The obligatory shot of the Swiss flag:
007.JPG


For the next three hours, I plundered all sorts of lightly-tracked low-hanging fruit only a few yards from the groomed trails. The snow from the previous day was just dense enough to keep me from punching through to the bottom but soft enough to sink bootcuff to calf-deep. Because I could see a massive cloud bank heading toward us, which would kill visibility at all terrain above treeline, I was too busy hurrying in turns to take decent pix. All I have are a few scenics of where I skied:
002.JPG


003.JPG


004.JPG


005.JPG


006.JPG


For proper photos of this beautiful ski area with the green valley below, I'll have to redirect you to one of many Alpinforum TRs from a couple years back.

As expected, by 1:30 the entire upper mountain fogged up to the point that you couldn't even see ten yards ahead, ugh. As anyone who's skied across the ocean can tell you, this is one of the big (and less pleasant) differences between skiing in North America with its comparatively high tree lines. After 15 minutes of brailling through the summit area, I headed into a cute mid-mountain restaurant for a beer and the best thin-crust pizza I've eaten in years:
008.JPG


pizza.jpg


By 3:15, it was obvious that a clear-up wasn't in the cards and I downloaded to the base. Unfortunately, I learned later that the whiteout on the upper half of Pizol was a rogue cloud -- pretty much everywhere else in the region was sunny the entire afternoon. Oh well, three hours of low-angle powder on arrival day is better than sitting in an office, so no complaints here.

Back to the car:
011.JPG
 
Last edited:
Back
Top