Seefeld Austria Skiing Travel & Day 1

In Europe there is a week off from school each February. I think it is really for some Catholic reason, but it is commonly known as ski week. Last year over ski week we went to Rome, and did not ski. That was mostly because we had been skiing quite a bit last year by this time. This year the snow was late arriving and we had not been to the slopes yet. We initially looked at going to Zermatt, the ski area near the famous Matterhorn in southern Switzerland. After figuring out how expensive that is we"settled" for Seefeld. It is much closer and really not that much cheaper except that we found a great two bedroom apartment that was much more affordable. Seefeld is one of the ski areas close to Innsbruck and played a major role in the two Olympics that have been hosted by Innsbruck. It was less than a two hour drive from our home in Unterschleissheim.

This is near the city center. It looks like it was used for Olympic medal ceremonies.  

Saturday morning we took our time getting ready and drove in. In the ski season the southbound roads from the Munich area are terrible. We missed a lot of the heaviest traffic to get here in time to get some lunch, check in to our apartment and gather our ski rentals for the coming week. The town is nice and bigger then I expected. I was really trying to find a small ski area that would not be overrun for this week. It turns out that just because I had not heard of it doesn't mean it is not popular. Now I know that this is a very popular destination. We also found out that this is the first time in many years that the ski week break falls at the same time in most of the surrounding countries. The ski rental place was sure they would run out of equipment by Sunday.
Our apartment is nice and large and it has a view.

It takes us five minutes to get to any of the ski areas or the city center. This was our view in one part of the first ski area, Gschwandtkopf. Bless you, that is what I said about the name.

Sunday was our first day of skiing. Last year was the first year for the kids and we had not been on skis for over a year. We decided to start at the smaller of the two biggest ski areas, and start on the ski school slope to get the feel for it again. David was on it immediately and had no problem. Katherine on the other hand did not do well for most of the morning. She threw a walleyed fit several times freaking herself out. We finally got her going slow and making turns on the bunny slope. For some reason towards the bottom of the run she got stuck trying to turn and ended up pointing her skis down the hill. Instead of falling or turning she kept going and kept gaining speed. This did not end well as she went full force into a safety netting at the end. I was able to almost catch up as she stopped abruptly. A guy was standing nearby and started running towards her. I yelled, "I got her, she is my daughter". He kept going and cut right in front of me and picked her up. I am glad she did not have any kind of bad neck of back injury since this dude just picked her up. I was now thinking that he did not speak English so I yelled, 'she is my daughter, give her to me!!"; as I took her from him. She said her back hurt, but after a few minutes she was fine. The dude stood around looking at us. I walked over to him to apologize and says thanks when he informed me that I was rude to him. I stayed calm and told him I was sorry for yelling but my daughter was hurt and it was nothing personal. He was not impressed with my explanation and told me he was just trying to help. This went back and forth for a few seconds before we agreed to disagree. I tried to be nice about it, but it was for nothing I guess.

It took a while for Katherine to trust the skis again. The next run took us about an hour to finish. She slowly progressed and we found a nice long easy run that we did many more times during the day. The weather is so great, in the 40's and bright sunny sky. The snow was great too until the very end of the day. David was skiing the intermediate routes for most of the day as Cindy and I took turns staying with him. Katherine had some moments with no problems and still psyched herself out at times. The good news is that all of us are taking it easy and staying in control. No lasting injuries after day one. We skied until the lifts closed. Cindy and I have decided that we are too old to ski this many days at a time, but we are willing to suck it up for the kids.

I decided that the mountain sticking up on the left side was close enough to the Matterhorn, that is my Matterhorn of Austria. 

The ski area was very busy and the lift lines were long at times, but not too bad overall. I think we did good with our ski area. The plan is to ski three more days out of the next four before heading home.

More pictures and descriptions coming soon.