lazyotter

Determined to have a full day’s skiing today and make up for my day off yesterday, I was up the mountain a little earlier than usual. Tightening my boots up and putting my ski’s on at the top of Schlossalm I was dismayed to find my left ankle still hurt like cr*p. Then I made a startling discovery… While fiddling with my ski boots trying to make them less uncomfortable by losening them I found a sort of screw-in plug located in each boot’s heel area. A few twists on this and… no pain in the ankle. WTF!!

It appeared that the heel screw made the internal heel area (supporting the ankle) wider. What had been happening was that my ankle had been squashed in the over tight heel and caused a lot of bruising and painful rubbing. I losened this off rather a lot (and did the same for my other boot while I was at it) then continued down a nice wide red run.

It was amazing - no more ankle pain (apart from the damage already done). I couldn’t believe that I’d been so naive as to not examine the boots more closely on day 1, instead of day 6…

There then followed my best day’s skiing of the week. Stayed out until the very last lift, at which point my brain was sending out control signals to my legs to turn, but my poor little legs had by this time given up and only cared for going in straight lines. I completely wiped out about 30m from the bottom of the run and ended up going sideways/backwards/spinning on a huge patch of lethal ice which offered no purchase for tired legs. Luckily I wasn’t injured (gosh that would have been a great way to finish up the week!) and made it to the bar to savour a well deserved last pint of Stiegl as I watched the sun setting over the mountains.

Today I took the free ski bus to Dorfgastein, some 15 mins away. Dorfgastein doesn’t have quite as many runs as Bad Hofgastein, however it is linked to GroBarl and together it’s probably got more.

The snow in Dorfgastein was ace! Hardly any moguls, superb fresh powder that was a joy to turn in, and few patches of ice.

On the downside, my left ankle was done for. As soon as I put the boots in the morning on I knew it, but just hoped it might go away and wouldn’t hurt too much…

When I got out of the lift at the top of Kreuzkogel (2027m) and got onto my ski’s I knew it was going to be a short day skiing, as the pain was like having a hammer knocked into my ankle bone :(. I literally couldn’t turn at all without grimacing through the pain. As a result my right leg became completely exhausted too as I was favouring it most of time to try and get the weight off my left ankle…

It was very frustrating but a difficult choice had to be made. I was very much enjoying exploring Dorfgastein and it’s wonderful runs, but the pain I was experiencing meant I wasn’t able to enjoy the skiing. And so I had to call an early end to the day in the afternoon. :(.

Today I skied over two mountains all the way from Bad Hofgastein, down to Angertal and over to Bad Gastein. It was cool moving from place to place on ski’s and exploring loads of new runs in the process. I stopped for a nice coffee at Angertal and savoured it in the bright sunshine.

The snow on Stubnerkogel (2250m) - near Bad Gastein - seemed to be much better than on Schlossalm (2050m) and it was a joy not having to dodge as many moguls. The moguls have really been making things difficult for me as my turning still isn’t that great, and I keep going over the damn things instead of around them! And there seems to be loads of them here too, probably as lots of the soft snow is artificially created (especially lower down the mountain) and it’s quite busy, hence lots of people carving them out.

By the end of the day I was totally knackered, and I’ve also started to experience a longer than should be normal pain in my left ankle. It feels like something isn’t right with my boots which is making them hurt quite a lot. This was confirmed later in the evening when my left ankle was feeling quite bruised, and also my right knee a bit sore - I’d obviously been compensating with my right leg to take the pressure off my left. Not good.

Still to make up for things, I ate another excellent five course meal in my hotel.

I feel like I’ve had a fight with a mountain, and lost. I think the mountain used a big stick to beat the cr*p out of me too. Got rather a lot of aches and pains this evening, some from skiing and some from this blasted cold/fever thing. Hate being ill on holiday.

Today I decided to throw myself literally into the skiing deep end, and without practice or tuition headed to the top of Schlossalm (2050m) to refresh my knowledge the hard way. It has been a day of falling over and being very wobbly really, although some progress was made. I’ve discovered that Bad Hofgastein is rather a tough place for beginners, as its mostly steep and narrow red runs and hardly any blues. In fact the only way off the mountain is down a long and vertical red - not really what you need after a day of humiliation and bruising… Still, I stuck it out for 5 hours before a sore left ankle and exhaustion made me call it a day.

Tomorrow I think I’ll take a bus up the valley to where there are more blue runs and practice my technique. I’ve just eaten the entire menu in the restaurant and am now planning to get an early night. I’m sure I’ll find some new bruises in the morning…

I recently realised that we are now already well into the ski season and I still hadn’t organised anything. So last night (or rather very early this morning) I started my hunt to book some skiing for February. This proved to be extremely difficult, nigh on impossible in fact. I had originally wanted to go to Mont Tremblant in Canada (a country I have yet to visit), but despite me being completely flexible on dates, resort and cost, several hours trawling the web yielded no results. Next I tried Andorra (as I’d read somewhere there was a large skiing area all interconnected), but again no luck. By this time it was 2am this morning so I was forced to give up.

The most annoying thing was that as I was entering “1 adult” into all the holiday search engines (as I shall be going on my own this time), however, entering “2 adults” would nearly always return 10-20 hits! I couldn’t help but feel somewhat alienated as a single person, given that there are obviously less places available and choice for those of us who are on our own :(.

At lunch today I went into Runcorn “shopping city” to see if a travel agent could do any better. Over the course of some two and a half hours, a very helpful and persistent lady trawled the *entire globe* for me looking for any single person room availability in a half-decent location (I did reject a few possible places due to them having fairly small pistes). Eventually I left with something booked… albeit not where I originally wanted to go but better than staying in this accursed country for a yet another winter week.

And so I’m going to Austria on Feb 2nd for a week, and to a place I’ve never visited nor even knew existed, called Bad Hofgastein (850m). The Gastein ski area is part of the vast “Ski Amade” area - a total of 5 areas, 865km of piste and 270 lifts. Should provide me with plenty to do! And if that is not enough there are also spa’s and hot pools.

There’s a really cool interactive piste map here (click on Bad Hofgastein to show detail). The majority of runs are intermediate so hopefully I will at least remember something from the last time I hit the slopes otherwise it may be a painful start.