Liz and I claimed an under-the-radar Alps area that James has not! How did this happen?
1) The Lotschental Valley branches north off the upper Rhone, and a car train from Goppenstein tunnels under the northern alpine ridge for shortcut access to the Jungfrau region where we were staying in Wengen the next 3 nights.
2) The Lauchernalp ski area got a rave review on the Powderhounds website. Lauchernalp is south facing but the two day storm dumped about 18 inches, and more importantly that storm had a high rain/snow line and Lauchernalp’s top gondola runs from 8,900 to 10,200 feet.
After getting burned at Aletsch Arena, I checked that :Lauchernalp’s upper gondola had been open during the storm days Wednesday and Thursday. We got a scare as it was shown closed when we bought tickets around 10AM. But the gondola opened shortly before we arrived there after riding the access tram and two chairlifts. It’s also a plus that the top lift is a gondola because those two chair rides were brutal at 10F with steady winds of 15-20mph I’d guess.
The first gondola run mostly between pistes 10 and 11 was a score despite varied visibility.
The second run was skier’s left of #11 and some skiers released slabs on a short steep pitch. This raised my radar to keep off piste skiing under 30 degrees. Lower down was good skiing though it led to the Marwig T-bar below the gondola.
For my third run I returned to the area between the 10 and 11 pistes but it was already fairly worked over.
With the high rain snow line the powder was dense even at 9,000+ feet. It still skis great when untracked but not so much once it been churned.
So for run #4 I wanted to push farther afield for quality. I saw many skiers walking up the #30 hiking trail which had been packed. I followed them about halfway to this view.
I was already sucking wind so no way was I walking all the way to the saddle in the distance, so I traversed in to ski this line.
After that fall line I traversed right some more above piste #10. As predicted the hazy clouds cleared up midday.
I followed the few tracks down the mellow fall line at center of the pic above.
The tracks continued to a saddle where I’ve circled a resting snowboarder.
I skied to her and asked if she had been here before and which way she was going. She said it was too steep to the left. I stepped up for a look over the edge.
While there are tracks and snow fences below, it is indeed steep and surely subject to instability in today’s snowpack. I looked back and the snowboarder was gone.
I still have no idea where she went.
The line skier’s right was mellow for a while but then rolled over to ominously steep. I could see more rocks left but an open line right which I approached very slowly sideslipping. As I reached the rollover the new snow fractured across most of the slope about a foot deep and slid through the chute I planned to ski. I sideslipped carefully through the frozen granular base, needless to say not thinking about the camera at that time. On the wide apron below I took a picture back up.
The red arrow points to the top of the chute where the snow released. The debris runs from center to lower right. The above description is not intended as “Look what I skied,” but very much as a cautionary tale. On the map I have drawn my line in orange. There were a lot of tracks coming from skier’s right (purple), presumably from those who hiked all the way up the road to Lochernalp Pass.
I traversed into the #2 piste, took a break and called Liz. I rode the chairs back up to meet here for one last gondola run. Here’s part of the broad expanse between Stafel and Gandegg.
On most new snow days there would be lots of non-threatening powder here, but in this case the mid elevations were severely wind hammered and I saw no one skiing off piste down here.
Liz and I got one last powder shot on the way down.
This slope had less traffic because it starts above but ends below the Gandegg Gondola base.
Below that we took a picture of the steep slope with snow fences that I had seen partially from above.
In retrospect it’s clear I should have gone that way.
Total vertical was 13,300, about 7K of powder.
We heard about the car trains from James a couple of years ago. Here’s the one we boarded in Goppenstein.
1) The Lotschental Valley branches north off the upper Rhone, and a car train from Goppenstein tunnels under the northern alpine ridge for shortcut access to the Jungfrau region where we were staying in Wengen the next 3 nights.
2) The Lauchernalp ski area got a rave review on the Powderhounds website. Lauchernalp is south facing but the two day storm dumped about 18 inches, and more importantly that storm had a high rain/snow line and Lauchernalp’s top gondola runs from 8,900 to 10,200 feet.
After getting burned at Aletsch Arena, I checked that :Lauchernalp’s upper gondola had been open during the storm days Wednesday and Thursday. We got a scare as it was shown closed when we bought tickets around 10AM. But the gondola opened shortly before we arrived there after riding the access tram and two chairlifts. It’s also a plus that the top lift is a gondola because those two chair rides were brutal at 10F with steady winds of 15-20mph I’d guess.
The first gondola run mostly between pistes 10 and 11 was a score despite varied visibility.
The second run was skier’s left of #11 and some skiers released slabs on a short steep pitch. This raised my radar to keep off piste skiing under 30 degrees. Lower down was good skiing though it led to the Marwig T-bar below the gondola.
For my third run I returned to the area between the 10 and 11 pistes but it was already fairly worked over.
With the high rain snow line the powder was dense even at 9,000+ feet. It still skis great when untracked but not so much once it been churned.
So for run #4 I wanted to push farther afield for quality. I saw many skiers walking up the #30 hiking trail which had been packed. I followed them about halfway to this view.
I was already sucking wind so no way was I walking all the way to the saddle in the distance, so I traversed in to ski this line.
After that fall line I traversed right some more above piste #10. As predicted the hazy clouds cleared up midday.
I followed the few tracks down the mellow fall line at center of the pic above.
The tracks continued to a saddle where I’ve circled a resting snowboarder.
I skied to her and asked if she had been here before and which way she was going. She said it was too steep to the left. I stepped up for a look over the edge.
While there are tracks and snow fences below, it is indeed steep and surely subject to instability in today’s snowpack. I looked back and the snowboarder was gone.
I still have no idea where she went.
The line skier’s right was mellow for a while but then rolled over to ominously steep. I could see more rocks left but an open line right which I approached very slowly sideslipping. As I reached the rollover the new snow fractured across most of the slope about a foot deep and slid through the chute I planned to ski. I sideslipped carefully through the frozen granular base, needless to say not thinking about the camera at that time. On the wide apron below I took a picture back up.
The red arrow points to the top of the chute where the snow released. The debris runs from center to lower right. The above description is not intended as “Look what I skied,” but very much as a cautionary tale. On the map I have drawn my line in orange. There were a lot of tracks coming from skier’s right (purple), presumably from those who hiked all the way up the road to Lochernalp Pass.
I traversed into the #2 piste, took a break and called Liz. I rode the chairs back up to meet here for one last gondola run. Here’s part of the broad expanse between Stafel and Gandegg.
On most new snow days there would be lots of non-threatening powder here, but in this case the mid elevations were severely wind hammered and I saw no one skiing off piste down here.
Liz and I got one last powder shot on the way down.
This slope had less traffic because it starts above but ends below the Gandegg Gondola base.
Below that we took a picture of the steep slope with snow fences that I had seen partially from above.
In retrospect it’s clear I should have gone that way.
Total vertical was 13,300, about 7K of powder.
We heard about the car trains from James a couple of years ago. Here’s the one we boarded in Goppenstein.
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