Silvretta Montafon, AT 02/04/15

I'm now into the home stretch of this trip: three days in the region of Montafon located in the far southwest corner of Austria bordering Switzerland. It's only an hour south of where I was in the Bregenzerwald. Gotta love the proximity of everything here compared to the distances in North America.

My headquarters is Schruns (pronounced "Shroonse"), the largest village in Montafon, which has a storied history as a favorite inspirational spot for the celebrated American author Ernest Hemingway. You can find all sorts of internet articles about his time here -- which featured a sizable amount of earned turns (no lifts back in the 1920s) -- including this detailed piece and another with the punny title A Moveable Piste.

Day 5: Silvretta Montafon
I spent today at the largest ski area in the region, Silvretta Montafon, which can be accessed via a four-minute walk from my hotel. Similar to (but far larger than) yesterday’s stop, Brandnertal, in that two separate ski areas were connected by a tram in 2008, resulting in 88 miles of marked trails, tons of off-piste, and a whole lot of continuous vertical. Sorry for trotting out this disclaimer again, but it's a lot bigger than the trail map indicates:



The story of how the ski area developed its own unique niche over the last few years is interesting. To differentiate itself from such well-known nearby ski regions as the Arlberg, Silvretta Montafon took its natural terrain assets and developed a tagline and ethos, “das sportlichste Skigebiet,” which translates into “the most sporting/athletic ski area” (it’s a lot catchier in German).

When I first saw that moniker while doing research for this trip, I figured that it was pure marketing speak; however, Silvretta Montafon really does earn the name by offering numerous scheduled “experiences” that are divided into categories: athletic (sunrise skiing, freestyle park tour, night sledding/rodeln, off-piste first tracks, freeriding, etc.), enjoyable (culinary, movies), and family-oriented. Some can be self-guided; some are done with guides; others include instruction. They've crowned the entire program with an inspired set of advertisements (hats off to the creative people who thought up and executed this). Here's my favorite: "During ski vacations, my ex always wanted to sleep in." Hah, clever:



The experience I tried yesterday is called Hochjoch Totale, a variation of the classic sunrise ski run, where you go out and get turns before the lifts publically open. What sets this apart from versions at other ski areas is its sheer size: 22 miles of trails covering 5,700 (!) vertical feet, the biggest continuous drop in Austria.

I joined a few others at the hotel bus stop at 7 am:



Arriving at the base at 7:15 am, you take a few gondolas to the summit and have a hot tea while admiring the sunrise:



Look out over a 2,000 vert drop:



Do some warm-up exercises:





Get ground rules from Raimond Köhler, who dreamed up and is in charge of the entire "experiences" program:



And then you and several dozen of your closest friends are set loose on the mountain:



You can do the whole run at your own pace, take a break whenever you want, or for those with iron thighs, attempt to clean the entire top-to-bottom shot without stopping. After meeting at the bottom, everyone takes the lifts back up to a mountain restaurant, where a titanic breakfast awaits:



In addition to classic Austrian breakfast dishes, locals urged me to try the sweet regional favorite called “Brösel” in Montafon or “Riebel” in the rest of Vorarlberg. With a texture resembling cous cous, you eat it with applesauce -– and it’s fantastic:



Here's Walter Schifer, who generously gave me a local's tour of the ski area, with a smile that can only be achieved while enjoying Brösel:


 
The rest of my day was spent trying to keep up with Walter and his World Cup skis. I managed to hit a few nice knee-deep lines:



We moseyed through the woods:



Watched a helicopter evac from the middle of a trail:



And then cruised in for an early-afternoon drink on the sunny deck of a hut (neither of us ate lunch due to still being full from the aforementioned breakfast):





A great experience.

Heli evac. Have not seen one of those in a long time.  I hear it has snowed big the last couple of weeks too. This is an amazing trip. One day I will take my kids to do some big mountain skiing.

how do you comment on what looks like a perfect trip?
Saw a few heli evacs in Zermatt too...No patrolers with meat wagons.. They just call in the heli..

Wunderbar
The Austrian breakfasts are always filling. The runs look beautiful. Thanks for the continued updates.

I did see a heli evac last year at Hunter.

I've got nuttin

what an amazing trip

again, thanks for sharing

I always like the awkward way that German translates into Merican.

How many actually T2B 5700 hunge?

Great story and telling. You must be pumped.