The Ferguson Four First Time Weekend Austrian Ski Adventure

I got to looking at the pictures over the past couple of weeks and decided I am behind on posting. The longest and most important story first, our first family ski trip.

We have plans to travel to Charmonix France to spend a week there over Christmas skiing, but that was not soon enough. We planned a weekend trip to get the kids introduced to the sport and to get past the initial learning phase. Man did they ever get past that quickly. This weekend is the first weekend that any of the dozens and dozens of ski resorts were open. It was a little overwhelming trying to find a place that was a good place for beginners, had the ski school open, had hotel availability, and had rentals available for us. Also, I had to do all of it online, 'cause that is how I roll. The ski area near Alpbach Austria is what we settled on. We found a great rate for a two bedroom apartment, reserved the rentals online, and got a private lesson set up for the kids.

Friday after school I picked up the kids, met Cindy at the house and we headed out. Alpbach is about 150km from our house and with no traffic would take less than 90 minutes. We immediately hit a big backup a few minutes down the road. It ended up taking about two hours to get to the ski rental place. We had to head out that early because the rental place closed at 6pm, and we had to get our skis that night because we did not have time to do it in the morning because of the early ski school appointment. We found the rental place relatively easily and walked inside. They were really nice and got us set up with boots and skis. The lady asked about helmets, we told her the kids already had them. She said what about you two, talking to Cindy and I. We said no thanks, we are good. She paused and finally moved on to the next item of business. We did not find out until later why she was so puzzled. The kids were not too sure what they were getting into after trying on those boots, as you might imagine they did not love getting strapped into those tight rigid ski boots. We went to the counter to get the skis and to adjust the bindings to our boots. Katherine started glowing when the guy pulled out some pink skis with a magical blue unicorn on them.

 Ski rentals, check. Now it was on down the road to our apartment house, hotel. The town is very small and we drove to the general area pretty quickly. I had no data on my cell phone at this point because we had crossed into Austria and my plan only works for Germany. Once you are roaming you have to pay for data access with a subscription for a day or week. The main road was about one and a half lanes wide with snow piles on the side. Trying to get past one of the larger hotels was a mess with people walking, cars trying to find parking, and other cars just driving. I ended up driving past our place. Down the road a lady flagged us down offering to help. We told then where we were staying and they gave us great directions.......if it were daylight and we knew where any of these landmarks were that he was talking about. They made perfect sense the next morning in the daylight. About that time I had also managed to subscribe to a 24 hour data plan and replaced our GPS coordinates with an actual address. We had local directions plus google maps on our side now. We made it back to the big hotel and took a right turn up the hill. The car barely made it up the icy hill. When I made the right turn onto the street I thought we were going to slide down the hill. After a few touch and go moments we got back into the general area and found some parking under a building that we thought might be our apartment. Alas, it was not. Cindy walked around for a minute, and actually saw a sign referencing our building name, Aparthaus Hubertus. Now it was my turn to walk around, I went down the hill to a pub and asked the bartender who told me one thing and in the next several minutes I got three other direction from four other people. Long story short, the aparthaus ended up being a little further down the road from where we parked thirty minutes earlier. We never thought to go further down that road because there were no lights and it did not look like anything was down there. When you pull up to it a fancy little motion light turns on for you, isn't that nice? As I walked in the door the owner greeted me, asking if I was Mr. Ferguson. Finally, we were home. The owner was very nice and quickly showed me the room and gave me the key. The only restaurant near us was no longer serving food, it was just a smoky bar at this point. We heated up some frozen pizza that we brought with us and opened a bottle of wine for dinner. Time to get some rest for the big ski day ahead.

The above two pics are from our aparthaus room. It was Saturday morning and we were bundling up to head out. We were to meet at the ski school office. We arrived early as did the instructor. We followed him in our car to another part of town called Inneralpbach. He showed Cindy and I where we can park to head to the slopes. Since the kids were first time beginner skiers they were going to stay off of the mountain in an area set up for ski school use only. I had not really been looking for private lessons, I was fine with a group session. We found out during planning that most places do not offer group lessons on Saturday. The lessons start on a Sunday and in most cases they want you to register for a weeks worth of training. We went for the two hour private lesson on a Saturday instead. We got the kids started, got our lift tickets and headed up the mountain. When we were teenagers we used to go skiing every year. We had only been skiing once since we have been married and that was about sixteen years ago. We had no idea if this was going to be like riding a bike or a complete disaster. I admit making that first turn there was a bit of doubt, but I remembered quickly and was good to go. Cindy was very tentative but was managing just fine too.

We took our time and did a few of the easiest blue runs (here it goes blue, red, black as opposed to green blue black in Colorado, at least sixteen years ago that is what it was).As the morning went along more and more people were showing up. At the top of the mountain where most of the lifts converge I started to look around at the people. It was now that Cindy and I realized we were THE ONLY people not wearing helmets. Now I know why the ski shop lady was so puzzled. There may have been a few, but I never made a mental note of anyone else not wearing a helmet. Also, last time we skied, snowboarding was the cool thing. This many years later just knew that skis would be in the minority and we would have to deal with a bunch of punk snowboarding people. Not true either. There were relatively few snowboarders here. I am wondering how different the ski culture is here is Austria vs. the USA. Anyone out there been skiing lately? I am interested to see comments on if helmets are so prevalent in the US and if snowboarding has lost some popularity.

Cindy and I got our ski legs back and needed to head back to pick up the kids. Cindy took the gondola down and I skied down one of the red runs to the bottom. It was then that I realized just how big that mountain was, my legs were tired after that little adventure. When we got back to the ski school area we saw both kids go down a very very flat learning area and make some turns, good progress, right? We were ready to take them up the mountain but our instructor made us doubt that decision. He went on to tell us that many first time beginners stay in this small private area for several days and up to a week. I still think that is crazy talk. Jamie, the instructor, was talking about having us meet him again the next morning to continue lessons. I asked him if he had any appointments that afternoon. I think he had something personal planned but was really nice to hang with us. We had lunch with him and convinced him to continue his lesson with the kids on the mountain.

After lunch Jamie took us to an area that is used by the ski schools on top of the mountain on a short blue run. It is not too steep, but much more so than that crappy private area they were in. David almost immediately started making great turns and managing his speed good on this hill. At the bottom of this run was a "button lift" that was just a disk on the end of a string that you grab and hang onto with your legs. It pulls you back up the hill to the top of the beginner run. David went up and down this little run several times and figured it out on his own after the morning lesson. This allowed Jamie to spend the rest of the afternoon with Katherine. David was ready and begging to go out to some longer blue slopes. Cindy stayed with Katherine while David and I headed out. He did really well for his first day of skiing. He was a little hesitant at first when we came across some of the steeper parts of the blue runs, they call them "pistes" here. We got some great photos of the alpine range around us.

We met back up with Cindy and I think the three of us did a couple of runs together. Once we got back to Katherine and Jamie it was getting late in the afternoon. The visibility had dropped, the wind was up, and it was snowing pretty hard. Katherine was making progress but she was relying on Jamie too much and would not let go of the ski poles or his hands when making turns. At this point I was thinking he needs to cut the cord and make her do it. He was still slow rolling us on her, saying she needs a lot more instruction. We called it a day and headed to the ski school to pay. Before leaving there we decided to reserve Jamie for the next morning for Katherine. We did not see any way to keep Katherine with us and everyone else to be able to enjoy the next day skiing.

The next morning we met Jamie on top of the mountain. The weather was perfect and the sun was out. Cindy stayed with Katherine and wanted to get her legs warmed up on the learning slope before going all out. David and I took off. He was more confident on day two. The kid was pointing his skis down the hill and going. We made a few runs then went back to pick up Cindy. This was only about an hour later and Katherine was now skiing like a champ. She made up her mind that she could do it, and got immediate results. Jamie was willing to continue the lesson on some of the more difficult blue runs. I went with him and Katherine while Cindy tried to keep up with David.

All of the sudden Katherine had figured it out. She did great on the harder blue slopes and was having a great time.

At noon on Sunday we said good bye to Jamie. He was a great instructor and the kids really liked him. He is from the UK and sounds like he is struggling with finding work in the off season. He is very good at instruction though and we were glad to have him. He seemed genuinely pleased with the great progress that both kids made. It was a wonderful experience to have him with us this weekend.

We grabbed some lunch at a restaurant on top of the mountain and pretty much stayed together skiing hard for the rest of the afternoon. Katherine was going just about as fast as Mommy and Daddy wanted to go, David however, wanted to go faster. We gave him strict instructions to stay on this one long blue run and allowed him to go fast. Katherine plus the parents were able to make the run three times in the time it took David to did it four times, so not too bad. For the last part of the afternoon we all stayed together and Katherine was getting a little too speedy. She started pointing her skis downhill and going. A couple of times I had to get into gear to catch up to her and tell her to slow down. I am not sure where she heard it, but at one point Katherine started talking about hash tags. Later while barreling down the mountain she was yelling "HASH TAG YOLO". It was the funniest thing I have ever seen. What makes it better is that that night we had to explain to her what hash tag was, and why it is overused in society today with Twitter. Then we had to define YOLO for her. I don't know where she gets this stuff.

We skied until almost 4pm, dropped off our rentals (said goodbye to the magical purple unicorn), paid the ski school again, then hit the road back home. We had heard about the traffic coming from the slopes on Saturday and Sunday, but did not believe it until now. It was a very stressful 150km drive back home, but we managed to make it in less than two hours. Not bad to spend a full day skiing and be back home a little after six. Everyone got bathed, unpacked, and to bed for school and work the next day. I am happy to report no injuries and only a few minor falls. Once we get past the soreness of the next couple of days I think we will recover in time for our next trip to Chamonix. I am concerned about trying to keep up with David during our week long trip. We will figure it out when the time comes, but I am not looking forward to being out skied by my ten year old, or five year old for that matter. I did take some videos of them while in ski school, but did not manage to get good videos of them Sunday afternoon after they had figured it out. I think a helmet cam might be in order for our Christmas trip.

Another post coming soon with some of our Christmas season and school activities.