Skiing without snow (nearly)

I remember on my first year skiing I had a bit of trouble adjusting to having to walk around in the village on that cold white "snow" stuff; on our way to the pub the first night and for the few days afterwards I was slipping and sliding all over the shop until I got my "snow legs". I needn't have worried about it this year. Once again, we arrived into a snowless ski resort. It was a little bit better than Kitzbuhel last year in that you could ski all the way down to the village, but only just about better. The day we arrived there wasn't even any attempt to get on the white stuff though, as it was just about getting dark when we arived and there was an ireland match to be watched anyway (strangley enough, same as last year!).

We had just about enough time before the match to get sorted out with gear, and I finally bit the bullet and bought myself a pair of ski boots. Last year, I'd been looking at the sales in the Great Outdoors in Dublin and at the end-of-season clearance sale the boots were down to about €300. Here, the boots started at about €250 and even then I got them reduced to €150 because there were a few of us getting them together and because the shop owner had a deal with the guy we were staying with. So, €150 for a pair of boots I'll wear maybe one week a year, am I mad? No, paying €400 for a pair you'll wear one week a year, that's mad! ;-p

So, sunday morning we headed up the ski slopes. Straight away, we noticed something. It was warm. very warm. Too bloody warm in fact! Normally when you go skiing, you get the expensive ski jacket and pants for a reason: the temp is normally in the minus figures. Minus 5 degrees is nice weather for skiing, anything lower is maybe a bit chilly. Here tho, it was plus 5 degrees - at 9am! By early afternoon, I'd seen a thermometer on one of the ski lifts reading an air temp of 15 degrees! This was nice in one way as you could ski in just your base layer or a fleece instead of being wrapped up like an arctic explorer (altho you couldn't lose the ski pants which got a bit toasty), but bad in that the snow conditions got messy real fast in the afternoon. High temps and lots of ppl sking combined to make the slopes pretty slushy and bumpy by about 2pm, and there were no piste bashers in evidence around to smooth things out again. By later afternoon, some of the slopes were less ski runs and more obstacle courses as you had to navigate around bumps and moguls that had been carved out gradually during the day.

This unfortunately was somehting that didn't change as the week went on: it got a bit cooler but never went below zero during the day, which meant that they couldn't use the snow cannons to make more snow (it needs to be below zero for that to work). Add to that the fact that we pretty much didn't see any snow falling on Zell til the last run of the last day (and even then only on the top of the mountain, any lower than 2000m and it was rain) meant that the snow we had at the start of the week was the snow we were stuck with til the end of the week. The mornings were ok, as the snow had a chance to refreeze overnight and hte piste bashers went in after it got dark, but by the afternoons it was a slushfest again. The worst run was on the last day, a 1km(ish) red run down to the village which by the time we went on it was just pure muck to ski on. Was as much ice and slush as actual snow, you couldn't turn worth shit, was bumpy as feck and even the experienced skiiers with us were wiping out. Everyone was knackered and soaked by the time we got the whole way down.



Then again, it could have been worse. I feel sorry for anyone who was arriving on the day we left - it was pissing rain all morning and as we were dropping our gear off in the shop the assistant told us they were after closing all the lifts as the ski conditions were just so bad - and this was just before lunch! So, if you arrived in Zell on the 1st March, I hope you were into hill-walking 'cos you sure as shit weren't going to be doing any skiing!