Powder Day in St. Anton!

It dumped all day yesterday, continued overnight, and was still snowing when we woke up this morning. It was our first powder day of the trip! YEA! We estimate that over a foot of fresh snow was waiting to be snarfed. Sure beats skiing in rain!

We got up to Galzigbahn lift by 9:15 a.m., along with thousands of other skiers. The lifts were late to open, so everyone waited in a big crowd. Incidentally, the Galzigbahn cable car was the first cable car designed for winter operation.

I had some intel from another hotel guest that there is a lot of off-piste skiing in St. Anton, but that you have to have a guide to ski it, because it is not avalanche controlled. Someone else advised us that, due to the heavy snow, we were going to be limited to skiing only in St. Anton today, and that if we wanted a guide, tomorrow would be a better bet.

We took advantage of the wait to try to line up a private guide for tomorrow. At first, we were told that there were no guides available. Then, a man walked in right behind us and canceled his guide. One man's loss is another man's gain. We were in luck!

By the time were ready to rejoin the lift line, it was moving. We moved like a combination of cattle and sardines toward the tram loading area. When we got close enough and the next tram came by, we jumped in. It was like jumping into a subway car right before the doors close, with 50 other people all carrying their ski's and jumping in with you at the same time, and we were on our way to the top! It was the strangest, most disorganized phenomenon we've ever experienced. Not for anyone who suffers from claustrophobia.

We met other skiers who said this was the most crowded day they had ever experienced in St. Anton. This was because it was a powder day, and because all these skiers were coming down to the same couple of lifts in St. Anton (no branching out to other areas).

At the top, it was blustery with full-on blizzard conditions:

At the base, the sun actually came out in the afternoon:

We only skied 5 runs, that's all we had leg for, but it took us about 5 hours, given all the wait times in lift lines and a break for lunch. But they were 5 quality runs, all expert runs! That's a first for us in Europe. It was really fun!

Meanwhile, the hotel workers were busy digging all the cars, including Slippy, out of the snow:

When we returned from skiing, we had time for stretching, naps, swimming and hot tubbing before dinner.

The meals at our hotel are delicious and convenient!

We need to turn in early tonight and get ready for our big guided day tomorrow.

St. Anton, along with St. Christoph, Stuben, Zurs, Lech, Schrocken and Warth comprise the Arlberg, Austria's largest skiing resort, and one of the five largest skiing areas worldwide. The Arlberg has 305 K of downhill skiing, 200 K of deep snow skiing, and 88 lifts and cable ways.

Total vertical feet skied today: 10,022 feet.