After high temperatures and rain up to 2000m in the last week of 2009, New Years Eve brought some colder temperatures and snowfall. We got a tip off that it had been snowing in Davos through the day and there was the possibility of some fresh powder for New Years Day. We started 2010 with a 6am wake up and a drive to Davos. We pulled into the car park at Davos (Pischa) before 9am happy to see that the car park was almost empty. Pischa is the “freeride” area of the Davos/Klosters resort. They don’t prepare very many pistes here and large open areas are left where you powder hounds can get their fix in relative safety. After meeting with the rest of our group we got the gondola up to the top and spent most of the day exploring the area with 20cm of fresh powder and nice weather.
After a pretty good start to 2010 a trip to Grindelwald was in order for January 2nd. Some friends from home that I had not met in a long time were there on holidays so I decided to go and meet them and check out Grindelwald since it had been quite a while since I was up there. We decided to ski the First area in what looked like less then optimal conditions. The weather was very cold and the visibility very poor until late afternoon. There had been about 30cm of fresh snow so the pistes were in great shape and some great powder turns were possible within a couple of meters of the side of the prepared runs. There had been quite a lot of wind loading on the slopes above and around the resort. Despite all this we had some great runs and some good laughs.
It was pretty late when I got home on the evening of the 2nd Jan. Shortly afterwards I got a phone call to see if I would come back to Davos to ski on the next day. I was pretty tired but another 6am start didn’t deter me from getting some more skiing done. I arrived in Davos at shortly after 9am to temperatures of -16deg and perfect blue skies. We decided to ski the Jakobshorn area and do the run from the top of Jakobshorn down to eastern side to Hof. This is an Avalanche controlled (blasted) but non prepared run but it still requires that you carry Avalanche Transciever, Probe and Shovel and take into account the conditions. The top of the run is the steepest off piste entry I have done to date on skis. I was feeling quite nervous and stuffed my first turn, but once I collected myself and got down the rest of the slope I was on a total high at having once again upped the bar a little on my skiing.
All in all its been an amazing start to 2010. Three days of powder and improvement in skiing, good friends and even the weather came out to play. Day 4 of 2010 brings us back down to reality with a bang and back to work. But there are many more weekends ahead to get out there and enjoy the best of what the Alps have to offer.
