Switzerland

Personal Journey

By Paul "Foot" Hand

All my life I wanted to visit Switzerland to see if there really is a Heidi. And also to verify if the Alps are as great for skiing as people proclaim. After seven days in Davos I can answer both questions with a resounding “yes.”

Heidi is still a pretty blonde, but is now a Mrs. She acted as our source of information regarding all aspects of Davos. She was a fountain of knowledge about where to have fun and where to ski. Heidi worked at the Sunstar-Park, a four-star hotel.

Davos is in eastern Switzerland in the canton of Graubünden, not far from the border with Austria. We flew into Zurich and took two and a half hours by bus to Davos Platz, where the Sunstar is located. The room I shared with Bob had a full view of the base of Jacobshorn ski area, one of seven within easy reach by bus or train from every hotel.

An area-wide pass is good on all trains, buses and lifts. It is plastic and the size of a credit card. A magnetic field activates the barrier at authorized lifts. It is hands-free; you keep it in a right side pocket. Switzerland still uses francs and there is a modest charge, which is added to the cost of the pass but is refunded when the pass is turned in. It cost us less than $40 a day to ski in this famous resort.

My 18 companions were fellow members of the Bucks County (PA) ski club. Our ages is ranged from eight to 75, with eight of us retirees. Several had knee or leg injuries, some had been to Davos before, and we had varying desires on how aggressively to ski which slopes. Two sub-groups skied at their comfort levels. However, both managed to cover six of the seven major ski areas that line both sides of a long valley. Davos, of course, connects with the other prestigious resort of Klosters –and we had fun in their territory.

One day we rode on funiculars, trams, gondolas, chari lifts and T-bars. Except for runs we made to the bottom at day’s end, all of our skiing was above the tree line. Vast and white alpine meadows are what attract many Americans to Davos. Most runs exceeded a mile.

Skiing in four to six inches of new powder with your mind on cruise control and your body in overdrive happens rarely. But this is the way it was from the top of Weissfluh down to Parsennhütte. A delightful drop of 2,800 feet. Runs we selected were blue and black. No off-piste was attempted; we didn’t need it with delicious new snow on previously groomed slopes.

Weather was nearly perfect for the whole week. We dressed lightly because the temperatures hovered around the freezing point. We left the hotel early each day, a custom that enabled us to beat the crowd at the lifts and make first tracks.

Heidi was too busy at the hotel to ski with us, but otherwise it was a perfect week.

Davos Holds Many Memories
by Editor Ted Heck

You don't have to be a skier to be aware of Davos, Switzerland, certainly not after the tremendous publicity emanating from the World Economic Forum held in January in this high alpine town. Few events command the attention that the annual forum gets when 2,500 statesmen, government officials and business titans convene to take stock of the world, peer into the future and chart courses of action.

Davos may not cure all economic ills, but it has been long known for health and wellness programs that date back more than a century. Because it is a year-round resort with tradition, it is a member of the marketing group called Best of the Alps.

For 56 years it has been high on my list of memories. If you never forget a first love, it is equally true that you never forget your first ski school. Christmas week, 1950. I was working in Munich, Germany, as a sports consultant to the Army of Occupation and doing play-by-play broadcasts for Armed Forces Network. Skiing was something I had to try, and Davos turned it into an obsession.

A dozen or more times, I have returned to this town in a valley surrounded by five skiable mountains. Often it has been with a Swiss cousin, Peter Guhl, who lives in Germany and doesn't mind driving 200 miles to cavort with me in the snow. On three days last week, we sped around the mountains: the famous and most popular Parsenn area with its broad boulevards, the interconnect with Gotschnagrat above Klosters, the big ice cream cone of Jakobshorn, and the somewhat remote Rinerhorn.

Photo by Peter Guhl

Despite an abnormally mild winter, snow conditions were fine, as long as we stuck to groomed, packed powder slopes on vast snow fields above the tree line. A former racer, Peter set a fast pace, which didn't bother me — until he led me onto a narrow, wooded trail for a 1,500-foot vertical drop through continuous, icy, rock-ridden moguls. Snowplowing through them turned my thighs to rubber.

I also scowled at Peter for wanting to ski treeless Rinerhorn. The surface was hard and the light flat; both were manageable. But not a chair lift in sight.

After the gondola to mid-mountain, every other lift was a long, steep T-bar — appropriately called a Schlepplift in German. Peter thinks Americans are sissies because they don't want to be dragged uphill.

Neither of us is big on apres-ski, so our evenings were quiet dinners in the comfortable Hotel Bahnhof Terminus, conveniently located 50 yards from the Davos Platz train station, and a short walk to the Jakobshorn slopes.

When not skiing, I toured the Congress House, where the forum was held. I window-shopped along Promenade street that connects Davos Platz with Davos Dorf and visited the astounding indoor swimming pool and sports center.

My memory bank clinked again at Europe's largest natural ice skating rink, 18,000 square meters of ice frequently shaved by a Zamboni. Somewhere in the attic at home is a 16-mm movie of me doing figure eights on that rink. It's a skill that twirled away a long time ago, but one that made me appreciate how beautiful the sport can be. The tourist office invited us to join a public afternoon party beside a small pond in Dorf, where he introduced me to several town officials. After a brief amateur hockey game, the ice was cleaned for an exhibition that had fans gaping in astonishment. Me, too, as a slim Italian girl floated around the pond and made several flawless triple jumps. We were watching 19-year-old Carolina Kostner, who had just won the 2007 European championship in Warsaw, Poland.

It was probably a routine day in a town whose calendar is filled with special events, for tourists as well as world leaders.