St. Anton, Austria , Jan. 25, 2013

Tony Crocker

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Staff member
On our last day in the Arlberg I returned to St. Anton to ski on piste, similar to Richard's day Wednesday. My legs were beat from Thursday and I did not get out early though it was a fairly nice day. There were some local fog banks up high but it was sunny more often than not. I used the free bus to Rauz to start and skied down to Zammermoos, keeping an eye on the upper mountain. I took a run down to St. Christophe and when I got back to Galzig the upper mountain had cleared some. I was a bit cold and the line was short so I went up the Valluga 1 tram and added a layer when I got there. There is a short piste from the tram down to a t-bar, shown in this pic from Wednesday.
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On Friday the base of that t-bar was in a fog patch.

From the top of the t-bar the long piste #16 descends the bowl under the Valluga. I went back up on Schindlergrat, from where you can take the same piste under the Valluga or #15 into the Schindler Kar bowl. The piste goes halfway down the bowl before turning left in this pic on a catwalk.
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At that point I continued down the bowl on ungroomed "skiroute #15a", stopping partway along.
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The rest of the afternoon was on lower pistes. I skied down to the base to follow up my snow stats inquiry, then took runs to Nasserein and 2 from Kapall. I planned to drop in at the ski museum (strange hours 3-10PM tied to the restaurant hours in the same building). Wrong day as there was a private showing and I wasn't going to wait around for it to finish and have to take the 6:10 bus back to Lech. Total for the day was 19,900 vertical despite starting after 11:30AM. The Arlberg has a very modern high capacity lift system with the exception of Stuben, which probably doesn't get the traffic to justify upgrading its 3 slow double chairs.

I got back to Lech by 5 and decided I should check out the home store for Strolz custom boots.
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The store exterior is in traditional Lech architecture with 3 stories but there are 2 additional floors below ground. The ski/boot shop only occupies the 2nd of 5 floors connected by a glass elevator.

I concluded 6 days in the Arlberg with minimal repeat runs: Only a few connector trails plus the backside run from Stuben because that had the longest section of good powder. I'm sure james will note that I didn't ski much off-piste at Lech/Zurs. It was not good snow my first day and I think guidance would have been desirable after the modest new snow Tuesday. Piste-to-Powder is based in St. Anton and were only on the other side for that morning on the back of the Valluga. Perhaps a day with an advanced group in the Lech ski school would be recommended and maybe james has done that.
 
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Yep, I remember that Strolz ski shop. Went in there several times to look at all the equipment I couldn't afford.

I like the pic of the bootfitter -- nice work if you can get it.
 
jamesdeluxe":232nkthv said:
I like the pic of the bootfitter -- nice work if you can get it.

I would have expected a similar pic from James' Austrian TRs, not Tony. Nevertheless, I approve.
 
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