Brigels, CH: 03/08/20

jamesdeluxe

Administrator
For Day 4, next up was Brigels on the other side of the valley from the previous day's Obersaxen/Mundaun. Frequented almost exclusively by locals, 3,600 continuous verts with several ways down, a comparatively narrow ski area, maybe a half mile across.

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Arriving into Brigels, you see that it's a proud home to Switzerland's fourth official language, Romansh, which gets top-billing on street signs here in the canton of Graubünden.
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In an inspired move: mid-afternoon on the upper-mountain HSQ, two friendly Romansh-speaking teens were giving out little booklets at the bottom that translated ski-area terms from German into Romansh, accompanied by an audio tutorial on the loudspeakers during the lift ride. Everyone on my chair was laughing while trying to pronounce the words correctly, which sounds like an odd 60/40 mixture of Italian/Spanish and Swiss German.

My SOP was to stay on the upper 2,600 verts, alternating high-speed cruising on velvety groomed trails with low-angle ungroomed runs through the windsift:
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Gorgeous views across the valley from anywhere on the mountain:
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Looker's left from the summit:
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Looker's right along the ridge from the top, an excellent side-country run you can take all the way to the bottom. Would've done it if I'd had a partner:
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The omnipresent Swizly Cider cow, always good for a photo opp:
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While I wouldn't necessarily put Brigels in the "must-visit-again" category, it's a fun locals mountain that underscores how even the comparatively less remarkable ski areas here are pretty damn good.
 
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On Google Earth Brigels appears to have sunny exposure like Flims-Laax. But it looks good here, presumably due to the storm you had your first two days.
 
Yes, very sunny but cold temps kept conditions wintry on the upper 2,500 verts. Offpiste especially was very soft except where wind had stripped the snow. I only went down to the valley at the end of the day, where one encountered expected slush spots for this time of year on the lower 800 feet.
 
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