Tschiertschen, CH: 03/10/20

After a mostly sunny weekend, the weather turned gray again on Monday with low cloud levels and flurries so I took most of it off as a rest day to prepare for what wxers predicted would be a partly sunny Tuesday at an indy ski area I'd visited and liked two years ago: Tschiertschen (pronounced CHEER Chen).

Even 24 hours out, they were sticking with that forecast; however, it turned into a surprise powder day with nuking nonstop from bell to bell. Even more interesting, this was more of a North American storm experience in that I was skiing a place that had trees 2/3 up its 3,400-foot vertical AND you could actually see where you were going, even above treeline.




Instead of the normal $45 ticket price, I scored a popular midweek special from Tschiertschen's website, the "Pistenknüller" (for lack of a better translation, the "trail hit"): $29 gets you an all-day lift ticket plus a nice lunch at any of the the five on-mountain restaurants.




My pix are pure storm day = no great visuals, sorry. Half a foot was already down when I got on the lift at 9:45 and it fell at an inch an hour until I stopped at 4 pm. I'd bet that they ended up with a good 15 inches by the time the system moved out mid-evening. There couldn't have been more than 20 people on the entire hill, if that, so every run was fresh tracks unless you were skiing right under a lift. Here's what Tschiertschen looks like on a nice day (I added my photos from two weeks later at the bottom of the thread).








It was difficult to find people to use as photo subjects. Here are the only ones I ran across:





As I was leaving the restaurant; these boarders were arriving, no doubt to take advantage of the Pistenknüller lunch deal:



Mid-afternoon strudel break:

This sure sounds like a 10 out of 10 type of day...

JasonWx wrote

This sure sounds like a 10 out of 10 type of day...

Anytime you read "nuking bell to bell" it must be a 10 out of 10. Again, thanks for sharing JD. Pure awesomeness from places that I know I'll never get to ski at.

Storm day skiing pics have a unique beauty in and of themselves. They certainly tell the story, which is what counts. I’m gonna need a little help with the phonetics of that resort name though.

Score.

For starters, if the place was on your list for a return visit it must be really cool.  Then, skiing in Switzerland in a very cool place is great enough....but to have such a place practically to yourself, with untracked double digit freshies?  That’s a dream.  Thanks for the report!

Thanks. I must be getting old or Euro'd but these days I want fresh snow like that under sunny skies.

Brownski, I always include a phonetic readout of tough-to-pronounce ski area names at the top of the report.

I see it now- never would have guessed

James
Trump just shut flights down from Europe after Friday
Either head home or I look forward to a months more TR

Oh and thanks for the Strudel porn

Americans can come home.

James how many more day do you have?

Glad you had a great day.

Z wrote

Either head home or I look forward to a months more TR

That would be a good problem to have: job, family, and discretionary spending aside. As mentioned in my other TR, if you didn't read or listen to any media, you'd never know that anything is wrong here in Switzerland. Everyone is following the British edict "keep calm and carry on" (of course, if I were in the Italian-speaking canton Ticino, which is heavily impacted by the closed Italian border, I wouldn't be saying that).

Harv wrote

James how many more day do you have?

After seven ski days, I'm at the gate waiting for my flight back to EWR. With Americans scurrying home on the final flight before the ban starts, it feels a bit like the movie Argo, except we're not going to be shot by authorities or pummeled by angry locals. If Agent Orange had made his declaration a few hours earlier yesterday, I could have taken Swissair's late afternoon flight back and slept in my own bed. He finally has a chance to do something that works in my favor and even that goes sideways!