Skiing at the Stubai Glacier

Our first outing of the season!

Stubai is in Austria, a little way South of Innsbruck, is fitted with some seriously tall mountains – for skiing that is, the highest point on the glacier is 3150m and there is about 104 Km of runs. I am told it is the largest glacier in Austria.

The trip up the hill is so long it needs 2 gondolas – there is a mid-station that, connects the two lifts, so one doesn’t even need to get off ones bum to make the change.

The first of our three days there, we had a predictably late start, having arrived at the pension in the middle of the night. Our arrival at the pension came with a moment of suspense though. When we arrived the place was completely dark – no signs of life to be seen, I reasoned that, given the hour, this was probably not that odd. Hayley got out to rouse the owners, and when the tannie opened the door kitted out in her finest sleepwear (long dressing gown, curlers in hair and slippers) I suspected that we might have a problem. Turns out that we did have a problem, well… sort of. She didn’t have a reservation for us, it had been cancelled because of some duplication, the details of which I won’t bore you with right now – but the prospect of having to look for digs in the middle of the night, knocking on doors wasn’t appealing. Turns out she had the space, but it wasn’t prepared, no heating was on etc. Phew! We took it and dealt with a cool night over kipping in the car way below zero.

This is the view of the town from our balcony.

By the time we managed to get out of the pension and were on the way to the slopes ready for some action, a pedestrian on the side of the road began waving frantically at us as we passed… Uncharacteristically I stopped a few meters past him and he ran back to speak to us. An old chap, he’d been to the glacier that morning and it had been closed on account of the wind. He’d seen us - skis on roof and all kitted out and waved us down to tell us not to drive all the way out to the lifts coz they weren’t working. Decent of him I thought.

We thanked the old man and went a little farther stopping at the first viable patch of sleigh-snow we came across. In the valley there was not a lot of wind and we had a fantastic day sledding with the kids on a bit of blank land.

A small road ran across the middle of our sleigh slope, and the first few rides all ended in the little embankment of snow on the near side of the road, but this was soon to end. The road wasn’t busy at all and it was kinda rude to cut ones slope in half so the road became a feature of the sledding – I’ll show you what I mean in a minute.

Good thing there is no legislation for overloading sleighs! Bugz and Saz going slowly down one of the early rides.

Happiness is a red sleigh on a snowy slope!

Ok, you can’t tell from this photo, but Amber is actually having fun too!

Amber doing my job for a bit – a very short bit!

Ready to race – hands up all those who think that mom is going to, or will be allowed to win.

Aaaaand they’re off! Amber and Saz on their red speed machine making mom eat their powder.

Be still my heart within me… Don’t you like this photo? Subject tack-sharp (and pretty) with a nice blur in the background, not bad work for a compact camera.

How coy! Saz, on the way to a smile she doesn’t want to part with.

That’s better!

Remember I was talking about the road running across the slope…?

This is (a bad photo) but still, it has Amber going airborne over the lip of the road – watch the video of it below, it’s excellent

The light is failing now, and we’ve got tired kids, so time to pack up, find some-place warm and have some good grub.

Day 2 – a better start, off to the lifts, hoping they’re open, there was no sign of wind in the trees this morning so we’re hopeful.

This is the view up the mountain we’re about to ascend – glacier up the hill on the left…

Happiness in cable car 112 (Saz is getting tired of smiling – this is Hayley’s 3rd, or 4th attempt at a group portrait ;)

It goes on for a long time, but…

When you get up there – it’s worth it.

These photos are from day 2 although it was largely overcast, snowy and COLD. After about 20 minutes out we all had to buy balaclavas for any hope of continuing. kitting out with those was a stroke of genius – the kids love them, esp Amber who wants to wear hers even when she’s not on the snow. We looked like a bunch of criminals tho – helmets, goggles and balaclavas…

“Yer munny or yer lives!” Check out Saz (in the back) if the helmet was black, all she’d lack is a red light-saber.

It’s pretty country up here. The skiing was great, esp on day 3 as there’d been a good few cm of fresh snow over night so there was powder everywhere – skis would regularly disappear beneath the snow – a worrying first for the girls, who, when the powder was too deep were stopped by it. You can’t ski through waist deep snow on normal skis…

We tried a few of the reds – but Saz is having a slow start and is not anywhere near as confident on the snow as she was at the end of last season. On the first one we tried, she resigned quite early on and despite our best efforts she wouldn't go any further. Skiing down a gentle slope with a kid between your skis, or beside you is one thing, doing a decent red is quite another. Hayley had the first shift, and after about 500m was finished – I took over and came face to face with the massive fitness deficit I am currently carrying. The burn, the burn…!

Amber was keen on a few reds and we had some good runs. The last trip down was a bit of a nightmare though, there was some fault on one of the lifts and Hayley and Amber, who were out for a ski while I took Saz down the lifts at the end of the day faced some icy (red) steepness in the dark. Lets just say that the jury is still out on Amber’s willingness to do more reds.

It’s amazing where Europeans go with their kids and their dogs. I’ve seen kids in prams on frozen lakes while mom pushes the pram on her skates – same with roller-blades, and dogs in handbags everywhere. But at this place, there was one guy who had a big dog, don’t know what make, but it was following them down some serious off-piste slopes having a blast – the skiers would, on occasion completely disappear from sight under the snow and the dog bounded after them!

Saz is making friends with someone’s mutt.

Well, we all need to get into shape – there’s no doubt about that, there’s just the small matter of discipline - going for regular runs in sub-zero temperatures and the shortage of daylight hours of this time of year. We will look forward to the next bit of downhill!

Visiting friends in Plzeň

Anička and Josefinka are Amber and Sarah’s mates from the Eufrat school in Plzeň.  We have met them for play dates since we have been in Prague (Play date with Anička and Josefinka) and during the last meeting, Jiri and Martina suggested that we go to a hockey match with them during the winter season.

Having never been to a live ice hockey match, we eagerly accepted.

Jiri organised us the tickets and on Friday night, 21 November, we planned a trip back to Plzen to watch the match and then to spend the night with them in their home.  Amber and Sarah would spend the evening playing with Anicka and Josefinka with Martini staying home to watch them.

As we left Prague on Friday evening, the first snow of the season started to fall.  It was a great welcome to the winter, snow and an ice hockey match!!  We walked to the stadium during the hardest part of the snow storm and so arrived pretty wet and cold.

The match was phenomenal!  Plzen was playing Znomo and the crowd was wild!  There was even a professional crowd section, where the hard-core Plzen supporters were all dressed in gear and chanting and stomping in time and rhythm – incredible experience!  Unfortunately Plzen lost in the penalty shoot-out, but hey.

This is morning breakfast, with Jiri and Martini at the head of the table and Anicka and Josefinka in the front.

The girls all playing up a storm in the bedroom:

Jiri plays in a jazz band and treated us to some music:

On Saturday, after leaving Jiri and Martina, we headed out into the village to visit Tomas and his horses (previous visit to Tomas).  The road sweepers / snow ploughs are not working on Sundays in his village, so we navigated a very slippery, slidey road to his house and were unnerved by the sight of abandoned cars already in the ditch along the road.

His horses were very sociable today, expecting a treat to emerge:

This one took a special fancy to Sarah’s hood and kept nuzzling his nose right into it – even her hair was taste-tested: Tomas very kindly gave them both a ride before we left as him and his wife were about to go for a ride before evening.

Forest Walks and Country Air

After our visit to Modrava last week end, my feet have been itching to get into some open space and soak in the last rays of Autumn. After the visit to Roznov where Sarah stuffed her pockets full of Autumn leaves, she has been pining for forests instead of city pavements.

A long week-end was upon us with a Monday holiday, and in true fashion, I commenced my search for the week-end location on Friday night! The search was driven by looking for national parks with walking trails and then doing an accommodation search within the surrounds, and Lukov was the chosen destination with a B&B on the perimeter of the National Park Podyji!

On Saturday morning we collected the car and set off.

Along the way, the small country roads were lined with apple trees which were in full fruit. The girls hopped out the car and set off to pick fruit while we crawled along behind them. Maagies vol, we then continued to find our little village which was proving problematic as the GPS found 2 towns with the same name and we were left in the predicament of having to choose which one to try first. We got to the guest house in the late afternoon and settled down for the evening.

Sunday morning we bundled the girls into their kit and piled into the car to look for the parking area for the reserve (assuming it would be a little way away). To our surprise, we had gone no further than reversing the car out of the b&b driveway, and we saw the parking sign on the verge opposite, and so travelled a whopping 5 meters, parked the car and all piled out again.

We walked alongside a farmer’s field before getting into the forest where we would look for the trail that led to a ruined castle “Nový Hrádek” which ironically means “New Castle”, although dating back to 1358 (some history on this link).

So our walk begins (Colin’s photography is stunning!!!):

After a 2km walk, we arrive at the forest (seen above the green in the picture before) and see the path to Nový Hrádek, which is another 2km further. At this point I begin to wonder about the capacity of the smaller among us to go the whole way, but decide to see how we go. There was much talk about looking for deer and finding bunnies (we even had to pack carrots and bread especially for the occasion). The girls were animated the whole way, hunting for the invisible creatures.

There was a point when the girls claimed that they were tired of walking and would go no further, and I managed to get them to go past one more bend to see if the castle was there. My lucky day – it was!

As we left the castle, we now decided it was time to leave behind the bunny feasts and Sarah skipped along very merrily the whole way back, planting carrots and bread, and reciting all manners of carrot delicacies that the bunnies would enjoy… “carrot cake; carrot cup-cakes; carrot juice; carrot stew; carrot soup; carrot pancakes”. Believe me when I say this did not stop the whole 8kms back – A Forrest Gump moment.

Meanwhile, Amber just munched her carrots.After the walk we travelled to the neighbouring town of Znojmo to find some lunch. We enjoyed the scenery along the way:And there’s always time to fit in a sunset or two before going in for din-dins. This one reminded me of an African sunset, although is nothing like it really. On Monday we visited Vranov nad Dyji which borders the park on the West. Again, the passing scenery got Colin’s trigger fingers jumping, forcing him to pull over and take some snaps. This is the approach to Vranov nad Dyji and the view of the Castle(dating back to the 11th century) on the hill overlooking the town.

The town is linked to quite a large lake, which we braved the cold long enough to walk over the dam wall and explore a bit, followed by lunch in a small and cozy restaurant that beckoned us with it’s roaring fire inside. Home time, with our lungs full of fresh country air and the camera full of happy smiles and sunsets :)