Blown Away in St. Moritz

Last night we were delighted to meet an American father and son at our hotel, Chester and Dane Johnson from Texas and Oklahoma. We ended up having dinner with them at a nearby hotel's restaurant. We had a meat fondue which was really fun. We cooked the meat in hot oil. It was delicious, though not very balanced!

We ran into Chester and Dane at breakfast too. They said that they had attempted to take the Glacier Express train from Zermatt to St. Moritz yesterday. Due to high winds, their train was unable to go up high into the mountains. Their 6 hour ride turned into an 8 hour ride.

We found out that all the lifts at St. Moritz had also been closed yesterday due to high winds. Some of the lifts were open today, but not all, so we were limited as to what we could ski.

To get up there, we had about a 10 minute walk uphill to a funicular lift (cable car). There we met Al and Susan Weihl from Vail, Colorado. They had skied at St. Moritz before, but this was their first ski day here this year too. We were delighted that they were willing to guide us around.

After one funicular ride, we went up a second one, then skied down to the main chairlift that served us today. There were two main runs that we skied, with a few variations. The wind was honking for most of the day; at times it felt like we might get blown off the chair.

We broke for lunch at a very good Italian restaurant near the chair lift.

When we came back outside from lunch, the wind had died down a little bit, and it was sunny and warmer. It was beautiful!

The scenery is gorgeous up there. It's all above tree line, and the boundaries of the slopes are marked with posts.

There were some icy, slick spots, but there were also some fun powder turns that the wind had created. Brock again displayed some amazing guiding skills, and ability to read a mountain, showing the rest of us where the best turns could be had, despite the fact that this was the first time we had ever skied in Switzerland.