The weather was pretty mixed here in the northern part of Switzerland over Christmas. Conditions were not exactly tempting for Christmas day so biking on some snow covered trails became the preferred option for a bit of outdoor activity.
There was a fresh snowfall on the night between Christmas Day and Dec 26th. We got up early to head to Lenzerheide for some skiing and snowboarding. We arrived to perfect blue skies with up to 20cm of fresh powder. There had been a strong wind blowing during the snowfall though so the snow was either crusty or very lacking in places. We got a few nice runs in before the wind started to pick up and the resort closed some lifts. Conditions were pretty iffy, and the Avalanche risk was quite high so we were restricted to riding some fairly gentle slopes. After lunch we did a few runs on the pistes which were quite disappointing. Lenzeheide has been investing heavily in artificial snow machines over the last few years, this made on-piste conditions absolutely horrific. The majority of the pistes on the west side had large sections of blue sheet ice on them. Any fresh snow that had fallen on the pistes was long blown away, which meant getting an edge to hold was a bit of a nightmare.
Lenzeheide have also introduced a 5CHF parking fee for winter 2009/10, the signage was pretty minimal around the resort to inform people of this and the ticket machines were iced over and not working when we arrived. We did manage to locate someone to buy a parking ticket off after considerable searching. Despite all of this the staff from the resort were happily handing out parking tickets to the vast majority of cars when we arrived back to the carpark in the afternoon. Poor form from Lenzerheide Bergbahnen. Long time visitors would not be used to having to pay for parking here, there was not very many signs and the staff guiding people into the parking spaces did not mention anything about this new charge.
Weather Outlook.
The weather is still looking very changeable over the next few days. Areas in the northern part of Switzerland and the Pre-Alps may have some snowfall on Monday night (28th Dec). But the temperature is supposed to rise to about 10 degrees at in Zurich and rain on Tuesday and Wednesday. The snowline will rise to approximately 2000m which will make on and off-piste conditions pretty terrible during the middle of this week. Conditions are not supposed to stabilise until the end of the week, with temperatures dropping back down to about 4-6 degrees in Zurich on Friday but with quite a lot of cloud cover.
