Summing up: Ski-trip in Austrian Alps 300€ including transportation, accommodation and lift pass. 70€ for gear and some 12€ for helm.
Well, things didn't of course work out quite so smooth. The bus was cancelled and announced to us some 5 days before d-day. That's because people were gathered from all over the Germany and so few of us were coming from this region, 4 to be precise. Organizer gave us each others contact information so that we could come up with something. We decided to rent a car and drive there, at first we were ought to be the 4 of us and it was said that you won't anymore get the 100€ reservation fine back later than some 3 days before that d-day... But organizer indeed let one girl cancel it 2 days before and refunded her at least by her words, organizer denying it, pissing on our transportation costs as there would be 3 people sharing the car now.
As there is anyway no use to cry after spilled milk, we went on with the plan. It was rather stressful since I paid the car before receiving any money from the 3rd participant or even meeting him, but he was from Finland also so generally a word to be trusted.
Renting the car: www.billiger-mietwagen.de is the one and only place. It's a sum up page of different car leasers providing a good search tool and best offers. What I reserved was a Opel Astra wagon type car or similar of size for 5 days, fully insured, winter tires (also tyre insurance), unlimited kilometers and even without own-risk payment share in case of accident. The price for whole deal was some 190€! Very cheap in my opinion, especially when I went to fetch the car and it turned out to be 2 year old BMW 320d, shiny baby with 185bhp. And I have lots of driving experience from older 330d m-sport. Positive turn of events happened for a change. Oh and practicalities: the leaser made additional 300€ charge as a collateral on my credit card, and in case of accident I should have had to pay up to some 1500€ damages which I could have received then from the leaser. Quite strange arrangement, but I guess it might be just so that they outsource the liquidity management that way, as they have to wait for a bit to get the money from their insurance company and if they meanwhile use customers money they don't have to have own cash reserved. After returning the car it took also quite long to receive the collateral back, over 1 week at least. The car company in question was "Buchbinder" and I can recommend it at least due to fancy cars.
The road trip to Lachtal took some 9 hours with couple of stops and accidental drive trough of Münich because I missed a turn. I was driving all the time by myself because 1) I like driving good cars 2) The car was on my name 3) Legally other drivers should be listed and some additional fee paid to the leaser. Majority of autobahns were partially closed due to some maintenance/rebuild and also because of too much traffic. On our way back during night time situation was far better and 180km/h cruise speed was standard for great parts. When speeding at autobahn, constant annoyance are those slow drivers coming to outer lane at about 140km/h speed to pass by someone at the middle lane, or when only 2 lanes are in use. It's quite typical to drive outer lane with your high beam on or flashing high beam from the distance to signal that you are coming, if you are driving especially fast (over 170km/h or so). It was very well possible to drive some 200km/h also but those winter tires made it rather uncomfortable by trembling a lot and felt to be bending a lot when cornering. Technical upper limit for the tires was 210km/h and indicated by a sticker on dashboard of the car.
Unlike in Germany, a bingette (a sticker to the windshield) was required in Austria. A license for one week cost some 8€. Also one part on our way had additional 4,5€ one time toll. Highway speed in Austria's excellent roads felt really staggering after autobahn, but excitement came one smaller roads up to mountains. Speed limit was mostly 100km/h there and 70km/h for slower parts or villages (50 or 40 in exact center). 100km/h limit gave some sweet completely legal adrenaline boosted experience especially when roads went icy on our way back!
One day we went to a nearby village to shop some groceries. Guys had their knuckles white and faces grayish when we were flying trough the corners as I started to gain the trust into the car's abilities. On our way back we hit blizzard right in the middle of a intensive competitive driving with some crazy Audi-man (I probably couldn't catch him even if I tried but I left some risk margin not to do anything too stupid, or shake the beers too much in the cargo bay). Some 5cm snow layer covered the road in less than 15 minutes! We had to turn back in the middle of very steep raising road because these traction tires didn't just produce enough grip to climb it! It was quite stressful to turn the car in the slope, when it was sliding backwards like a sledge while footing break pedal trough the floor, but it was succeeded without damages. The other route wasn't probably much better but by then I had realized that I must drive without drive control system and let tires just grind their way trough the new snow. It was some very slow mountain climbing drifting usually door side first but the control into that car is rather perfect so why not. Lastly we had to really back up and gain some speed to be able to make a tight turn into the parking lot of our resident area.
Oh and important! At autobahn speed limit's can change drastically, and fast. And better to obey them fast because there are automated cameras in nasty spots like downhills etc... On our way back I got 2 speeding tickets. One after transfer from open limit to 120km/h and I recorded some 128km/h, and later when turning from 100km/h to 80km/h and I got again some 8km/h excess. Fine was 10€ in each case and bill came by mail in couple of weeks.
About the ski resort: When we arrived things run rather smooth and we got our keys and the rented equipment from organizers. Accommodation was in 5 people one bedroom flat with bed-sofa, pair-bed and a 2 level bunk bed. The building was a rather modern wood cottage with 4 of such apartments. All the basic functions were supported like kitchen and shower and even small old TV, big dining table etc but nothing luxurious or even proper drying cabinet, which would have been highly appreciated. Main building had fine Finnish (!!!!) sauna, and a swimming pool, for additional 8€ fee/visit. Expensive but it was sacrifice to be made couple of times. Arrive was at Thursday evening and ski passes were distributed early next morning. By 10am we were at slopes but due to some excess wind speed, chair lifts were not operating. Whole Friday and Saturday only anchor lifts served us from 9am to some 4pm.
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| Some wind and snow blizzard. |
Some times the wind speed really was very high: once when I carried my board in hand, if I had dropped it it would have probably flown away instead of dropping to ground. Visibility was also so limited that once it was almost impossible to follow a narrow, 5m wide, route. That was on Saturday afternoon and the resort closed even anchor lifts early (3:45 perhaps). On Sunday weather turned to be favorable and chair lifts were operational opening quite many other possible routes as anchors covered only some 4 slopes.
Overall: the mountain was not tall at all, highest spot perhaps 2800m and the downside of the slope at 2300m or something. There were not too many routes. Quite comparable resort to perhaps Ruka, only that Ruka has far better lift capacity. One side of the mountain was still closed whole time and no street/park was opened yet or even seen to be under construction. The extreme wind provided nice powder conditions in couple of slopes and there was also some limited off-route possibilities for more powder but nothing much. Snow wasn't yet deep at all because whole winter was quite snow poor at Alps (too). I cannot actually recommend Lachtal as a ski resort to anyone because at Alps there are so many far more better options.
People and night life: Happened so that there were majority of Finns because in addition to us 3, there was a group from Münich, some 5 guys. I cannot say that I'm too happy that it was so because not all had decent drinking habits. In addition to Finns there were at least 2 Indians who we shared our flat with, two English girls, a Chinese girl, some girl and a guy from Chile, American guy and others. Total group size was something like 20. Finnish guys had experience, and most of foreigners were beginners. Majority of the people hanged out in the slope as a big group but I was mainly going only with Artti, because I don't like the constant waiting inherent with big group.
People were drinking every evening till some 2am and I participated one of those evening and slept more or less the other 2. It was quite possible to catch sleep with ear plugs. There was a pub in the ski village, a walk away from our condo.
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| Sun finally broke out |
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| Artti doing some powdering |
-Heck of a driving experience was the biggest positive element (for me, not so for my unfaithful co-passengers)
-Some powder snowboarding was new experience to me and it was really good practice before my thigh muscle started to hurt due a strain.
-The weather wasn't at all on our side and that's of course a big influencing possibility with this kind of plans.Time of the year was far too early considering snow conditions because they hadn't open park yet, freestyle being the thing for me.
-People were fine, although I'm not interested in multi-day drinking and would have therefore preferred more isolated sleeping chamber. Ski-trip is definitely highly associated with drinking and people do such trips even more for drinking than skiing purposes sometimes.
-EXPENSIVE! Car trip, accommodation, food (low budget self prepared from local Lidl), equipment rental totaled to over 450€. This to be compared to less than 250€ of 3day (as well) Erasmus ski-trip to alps which followed later.
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