Hausberg
I was up early Monday morning and got breakfast at the hotel. There's one thing about Germany that you just gotta go with even if it seems a little odd at first. The rules.
The guidebook I've been carrying around notes that German people tend to be "compulsively law-abiding," and I don't think that's an entirely unfair assessment. What they don't mention are the little rules you can't fathom but that everyone but you seems to know. A little example: breakfast at the hotel. I grabbed some food and sat down. The woman who was minding the goings-on in the large dining room came over and told me I could not sit at that particular table, and didn't I see the sign? On the table was a little yellow sign. I didn't say "reserved" in any language that I could discern, and moreover, every table that I could see had the same sign on it. So I had just picked a table with a sign and sat down. But no! That sign means the table is reserved, and wasn't it obvious? Uh, no, but in any case, I asked in broken German where I could sit, and she pointed me far to the other end of the room, where one or two tables were yellow-sign free. This reminded me of a vague story I'm not sure I remember correctly, from when I was very little and living in Germany with my parents and equally young siblings. We stopped at a roadside stand to buy a picnic basket, but when the woman discerned that the basket she was selling was to be used for picnics, she refused to sell it. It was a bread basket, certainly not a picnic basket! What mystifies me is how I always seem to be the one person in the room who doesn't know the rules, and I'm the one looking lost and confused when everyone else seems to be in on the secret.
Anyhow, after breakfast I headed out to try to figure out the skiing thing. I did get skis, boots, and poles at the shop I had visited the evening before, where thankfully they spoke
enough English that I didn't have to complete this transaction in my very mediocre German. I could have walked to the base of the slope from there, but it would have been quite a journey carrying all that gear, so I caught the shuttle instead. At the base of the mountain I waited in line again, this time for lift tickets. I wasn't entirely sure I wanted to ski all three days I had scheduled to stay in Garmisch, but I bought a three-day lift ticket anyhow that would get me into any of the resorts in the region - mostly so I wouldn't have to wait in line again. After that was the line to get onto the main gondola, which was the only way up the hill that I could tell, unless I wanted to hang out in the flatlands with the kiddie ski schools. This took nearly 45 minutes to negotiate among the jostling crowd, and I was duly concerned that every lift line on the mountain above was going to be equally lengthy, though as it turns out this was just an unfortunate bottleneck on an otherwise reasonably crowd-sparse mountain.
By the time I got to the top and got on skis, it was near 10:30. But the skies were clear in every direction I could see, and some of that
new powder was still on the ground, and I headed downhill. The Hausberg ski area overlaps seemlessly with the nearby Alspitze ski area (on the mountain called Osterfeldkopf), and I traversed between the two for most of the day. One steep run called the Kandahar Descent was being used as a race course (although it looked mostly like practice runs from where I stopped to watch from the sidelines), and I remembered being here when I was very young and watching the racers go by on their way to the course. If I remember right, this is where Karen got knocked over by a high-speed racer on his hurried path to the top of the race.
There was another landmark that looked strangely familiar: the t-bar lift where, in about 1985, Kathy & I had collectively fallen off, and someone (someone who shall remain nameless, though there were only two of us there and it wasn't me!) suggested that instead of skiing back down to the bottom, we should just take our skis off and walk to the top, which shouldn't be too far. About 30 minutes later, we crested the top of the run, to find Bruce scratching his head and wondering what could possibly have happened that took half an hour for us to get up there. In retrospect, that seemed like a very good question indeed, though to be fair, we both thought the top was much nearer than it actually turned out to be!
About halfway through the day I stopped to get lunch at the chalet-like hut at the top of the main lift. I warmed up to hot soup with a view straight down the slope into the valley laid out in f
ront of me. After lunch I explored farther out away from the main gondola, where most of the lifts are not the high-speed six-person chairs that populate the main runs, but high-speed t-bars of the sort that I never quite got over since that little incident twenty-one years ago. But I wasn't particularly paying attention when I got myself way off on the side where the only way out was via a rather precipitously steep t-bar. I hopped on without thinking about it, but somewhere in the first stretch I didn't get the bar quite set right. It was crawling up my back and turning ever-more vertical when it should have stayed horizontal under my rear end. I think I could have fixed it if it hadn't been for the fact that I had a one-strap backpack slung around me, which I had originally thought I would leave in a locker somewhere, but which turned out to be very handy to have with me (among other things, it carried the shoes I had worn until I picked up ski boots in the morning). Anyhow, the t-bar was caught up in it, I was sliding off, and I finally decided it was time to quit fighting it. Better to drop off it, ski back to the bottom, and start all over again.
That was the plan.
That was not, however, the way it turned out.
I let go of the t-bar as I would at the top of the run, but I hadn't accounted for the fact that the backpack was still catching on it. I still don't know exactly what part was wrapped around the lift apparatus, but when I let go, the backpack did not come off with me but snapped to tension as the t-bar headed up the hill without me. And all of a sudden, I was face down on the track being pulled uphill by the strap of the pack still hung out on the crossbar, skis and poles splaying out in whatever direction gave up the least resistance. I realized this was also not a good position to be in, and I somehow managed to get both arms up over my head, at which point the backpack slid off and I was free of the dragging lift. Except...
I expected that the backpack would slide off once it was no longer under tension from dragging my 165 pounds up the hill. Nope! I looked up to see the backpack, now hanging neatly off the crossbar, making its way up the hill without me. Next I looked downhill, where there happened to be two people on the next t-bar down the line, shouting at me in German to watch out, since the only worse damage I could do at this point would be to trip up another pair of people and have the three of us piled up in the middle of the track. I managed to get myself off to the side in time for them to get by safely, but then I was on the border between the steep track and trees, which were mired in thigh-deep unspoiled powder. I considere
d skiing back down the t-bar track since the lift was fairly lightly used, but every half-dozen t-bars another couple of people came along, making it impossible for me to use the track. Instead I chose the trees, and immediately sunk in several feet and lost my balance, falling over to the side. And there I sat for a few moments, gathering my energy again now that I was out of danger of getting ski marks across my face. Standing up again was a struggle, with my poles sinking their entire length into the snow. By the time I got to my feet and back on the main ski trail, I was covered head to toe with snow, every muscle was exhausted, and I still had to make my way back down to let the lift operator know about my errant backpack. I must have been quite a sight, and I had to half-pantomime the backpack situation to the lift operator, since her English was about equally as limited as my German. She and I were both laughing when she finally got the picture and went in to call her colleague at the top of the lift to watch out for it.
And, of course, I had to get back on the lift. Albeit without my backpack, which probably simplified things enough that this time I made it to the top without incident. Though I did figure out exactly why I had fallen, and since it was really an unavoidable part of the run, I decided it would be best if I avoided getting myself down to that lift again. I found my backpack set on the side of the track, dusted it off, and headed out on my way.
I headed back toward the central area of Hausberg, follo
wing whatever lifts and runs looked appealing at the moment. I caught the upper-most gondola which rises high to the top of the mountain, and it was about that time that the afternoon chill was starting to settle in. It was past 3:30 when I finally glanced at a clock, and after the adventure on the t-bar my thighs were sufficiently tired to have settled into a general burn that didn't let up. Around that time I remembered something that Bruce had said before I left - describing our visit to Hausberg in 1985, he reminded me that we had taken a series of lifts up to the very top of the mountain, and then taken the whole day to ski down. The whole day, eh? Yup, it was three-thirty, I was exhausted, and I was up at the top of a mountain that once took the five of us a whole day to descend.
Fortunately, I'm not 10 years old anymore, and I didn't have a herd of kids in tow, so it really took me only about half an hour to make the whole descent. At the bottom I must have just missed the shuttle bus, but another one came in about 20 minutes, just as I was starting to get uncomfortably cold. Back at the hotel I took a nap (after negotiating another one of those German quirks: you can't take skis upstairs, but they don't tell you that, nor do they tell you that there happens to be a room in back set aside specifically for snowy gear), and then headed out for dinner. Italian this time, since Monday is the day that many restaurants are closed, and this one was both open and near enough for a short walk home afterwards. And I slept very well that night.
The guidebook I've been carrying around notes that German people tend to be "compulsively law-abiding," and I don't think that's an entirely unfair assessment. What they don't mention are the little rules you can't fathom but that everyone but you seems to know. A little example: breakfast at the hotel. I grabbed some food and sat down. The woman who was minding the goings-on in the large dining room came over and told me I could not sit at that particular table, and didn't I see the sign? On the table was a little yellow sign. I didn't say "reserved" in any language that I could discern, and moreover, every table that I could see had the same sign on it. So I had just picked a table with a sign and sat down. But no! That sign means the table is reserved, and wasn't it obvious? Uh, no, but in any case, I asked in broken German where I could sit, and she pointed me far to the other end of the room, where one or two tables were yellow-sign free. This reminded me of a vague story I'm not sure I remember correctly, from when I was very little and living in Germany with my parents and equally young siblings. We stopped at a roadside stand to buy a picnic basket, but when the woman discerned that the basket she was selling was to be used for picnics, she refused to sell it. It was a bread basket, certainly not a picnic basket! What mystifies me is how I always seem to be the one person in the room who doesn't know the rules, and I'm the one looking lost and confused when everyone else seems to be in on the secret.
Anyhow, after breakfast I headed out to try to figure out the skiing thing. I did get skis, boots, and poles at the shop I had visited the evening before, where thankfully they spoke
enough English that I didn't have to complete this transaction in my very mediocre German. I could have walked to the base of the slope from there, but it would have been quite a journey carrying all that gear, so I caught the shuttle instead. At the base of the mountain I waited in line again, this time for lift tickets. I wasn't entirely sure I wanted to ski all three days I had scheduled to stay in Garmisch, but I bought a three-day lift ticket anyhow that would get me into any of the resorts in the region - mostly so I wouldn't have to wait in line again. After that was the line to get onto the main gondola, which was the only way up the hill that I could tell, unless I wanted to hang out in the flatlands with the kiddie ski schools. This took nearly 45 minutes to negotiate among the jostling crowd, and I was duly concerned that every lift line on the mountain above was going to be equally lengthy, though as it turns out this was just an unfortunate bottleneck on an otherwise reasonably crowd-sparse mountain.By the time I got to the top and got on skis, it was near 10:30. But the skies were clear in every direction I could see, and some of that
new powder was still on the ground, and I headed downhill. The Hausberg ski area overlaps seemlessly with the nearby Alspitze ski area (on the mountain called Osterfeldkopf), and I traversed between the two for most of the day. One steep run called the Kandahar Descent was being used as a race course (although it looked mostly like practice runs from where I stopped to watch from the sidelines), and I remembered being here when I was very young and watching the racers go by on their way to the course. If I remember right, this is where Karen got knocked over by a high-speed racer on his hurried path to the top of the race.There was another landmark that looked strangely familiar: the t-bar lift where, in about 1985, Kathy & I had collectively fallen off, and someone (someone who shall remain nameless, though there were only two of us there and it wasn't me!) suggested that instead of skiing back down to the bottom, we should just take our skis off and walk to the top, which shouldn't be too far. About 30 minutes later, we crested the top of the run, to find Bruce scratching his head and wondering what could possibly have happened that took half an hour for us to get up there. In retrospect, that seemed like a very good question indeed, though to be fair, we both thought the top was much nearer than it actually turned out to be!
About halfway through the day I stopped to get lunch at the chalet-like hut at the top of the main lift. I warmed up to hot soup with a view straight down the slope into the valley laid out in f
ront of me. After lunch I explored farther out away from the main gondola, where most of the lifts are not the high-speed six-person chairs that populate the main runs, but high-speed t-bars of the sort that I never quite got over since that little incident twenty-one years ago. But I wasn't particularly paying attention when I got myself way off on the side where the only way out was via a rather precipitously steep t-bar. I hopped on without thinking about it, but somewhere in the first stretch I didn't get the bar quite set right. It was crawling up my back and turning ever-more vertical when it should have stayed horizontal under my rear end. I think I could have fixed it if it hadn't been for the fact that I had a one-strap backpack slung around me, which I had originally thought I would leave in a locker somewhere, but which turned out to be very handy to have with me (among other things, it carried the shoes I had worn until I picked up ski boots in the morning). Anyhow, the t-bar was caught up in it, I was sliding off, and I finally decided it was time to quit fighting it. Better to drop off it, ski back to the bottom, and start all over again.That was the plan.
That was not, however, the way it turned out.
I let go of the t-bar as I would at the top of the run, but I hadn't accounted for the fact that the backpack was still catching on it. I still don't know exactly what part was wrapped around the lift apparatus, but when I let go, the backpack did not come off with me but snapped to tension as the t-bar headed up the hill without me. And all of a sudden, I was face down on the track being pulled uphill by the strap of the pack still hung out on the crossbar, skis and poles splaying out in whatever direction gave up the least resistance. I realized this was also not a good position to be in, and I somehow managed to get both arms up over my head, at which point the backpack slid off and I was free of the dragging lift. Except...
I expected that the backpack would slide off once it was no longer under tension from dragging my 165 pounds up the hill. Nope! I looked up to see the backpack, now hanging neatly off the crossbar, making its way up the hill without me. Next I looked downhill, where there happened to be two people on the next t-bar down the line, shouting at me in German to watch out, since the only worse damage I could do at this point would be to trip up another pair of people and have the three of us piled up in the middle of the track. I managed to get myself off to the side in time for them to get by safely, but then I was on the border between the steep track and trees, which were mired in thigh-deep unspoiled powder. I considere
d skiing back down the t-bar track since the lift was fairly lightly used, but every half-dozen t-bars another couple of people came along, making it impossible for me to use the track. Instead I chose the trees, and immediately sunk in several feet and lost my balance, falling over to the side. And there I sat for a few moments, gathering my energy again now that I was out of danger of getting ski marks across my face. Standing up again was a struggle, with my poles sinking their entire length into the snow. By the time I got to my feet and back on the main ski trail, I was covered head to toe with snow, every muscle was exhausted, and I still had to make my way back down to let the lift operator know about my errant backpack. I must have been quite a sight, and I had to half-pantomime the backpack situation to the lift operator, since her English was about equally as limited as my German. She and I were both laughing when she finally got the picture and went in to call her colleague at the top of the lift to watch out for it.And, of course, I had to get back on the lift. Albeit without my backpack, which probably simplified things enough that this time I made it to the top without incident. Though I did figure out exactly why I had fallen, and since it was really an unavoidable part of the run, I decided it would be best if I avoided getting myself down to that lift again. I found my backpack set on the side of the track, dusted it off, and headed out on my way.
I headed back toward the central area of Hausberg, follo
wing whatever lifts and runs looked appealing at the moment. I caught the upper-most gondola which rises high to the top of the mountain, and it was about that time that the afternoon chill was starting to settle in. It was past 3:30 when I finally glanced at a clock, and after the adventure on the t-bar my thighs were sufficiently tired to have settled into a general burn that didn't let up. Around that time I remembered something that Bruce had said before I left - describing our visit to Hausberg in 1985, he reminded me that we had taken a series of lifts up to the very top of the mountain, and then taken the whole day to ski down. The whole day, eh? Yup, it was three-thirty, I was exhausted, and I was up at the top of a mountain that once took the five of us a whole day to descend.Fortunately, I'm not 10 years old anymore, and I didn't have a herd of kids in tow, so it really took me only about half an hour to make the whole descent. At the bottom I must have just missed the shuttle bus, but another one came in about 20 minutes, just as I was starting to get uncomfortably cold. Back at the hotel I took a nap (after negotiating another one of those German quirks: you can't take skis upstairs, but they don't tell you that, nor do they tell you that there happens to be a room in back set aside specifically for snowy gear), and then headed out for dinner. Italian this time, since Monday is the day that many restaurants are closed, and this one was both open and near enough for a short walk home afterwards. And I slept very well that night.
posted by skylanda at 11:07 PM
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