Trip to the Zillertal - skiing (!) sledging and a stroll

At the tail end of January I hopped on a train westward from Vienna, passing Salzburg and crossing briefly into Germany before plunging back into Austria, finally alighting at a station just before Innsbruck: Jenbach. Jenbach is located at the mouth of the Zillertal or 'Ziller valley' for you english speakers. This approximately North-South striking valley is a favoured winter destination for skiiers, as well as a great summer walking paradise (not to mention a geological treasure trove!). In January of course, the rocks aren't so visible under the layers of temporary white rocks usually referred to as snow.

I was in the Zilletal to visit a couple of friends who have taken over running a cafe there for the winter. Newly built and directly attached to a major ski lift and ski hire shop, it's a pretty great location! As I volunteered to translate all of the small german stories etc they wanted to put in the menu, I was rewarded with free ski hire for one day. When the offer was made back in the autumn, I realised that there was no way out: after over 4 years in Austria, I would have to try skiing!

I was very nervous, but thankfully my friends were also being visited by a former kite-surfing instructor who was of course good enough at instructing people to do anything physical that she made an excellent teacher. With her on side it was time to head up the mountain and try out the beginnerest beginner 'slope' (one bit was flat) there was. Up around 1800m or so there was snow aplenty, but it was unseasonably warm for my entire stay, meaning that we had gorgeous sunshine and I had no need of most of the traditional thick ski gear. Skiing was scary, but honestly easier than I expected (that just means I thought it would be impossible...), and after 3 hours of instruction I felt like I had enough control to be a bit less scared and I could even make a few turns! I was also exhausted. It is a very annoying fact that whatever muscles you develop doing your favourite sport (for me, dancing), whatever other sport you try will inevitably require completely different ones...

That evening we went sledging on the night-lit sledging run. In Austria, sledging means you sledge down a whole mountain (don't panic, it is a very winding course) after going up on a cable car. And of course, it wouldn't be Austria if you couldn't stop half way down at a comfortable Gasthaus (primarily reachable only by sledge in winter??) for tasty foods and even beer, if you're feeling extravagant. Sledging is actually a bit scarier than skiing, as you really don't feel quite as in control in my opinion.

The next day I just wanted to chill out, so I took a walk along the floor of the valley in the afternoon. One of the big ironies of landscape photography for me is that most of the elements that make easy and good landscape photos are actually man-made, providing fantastic lines leading the eye through the image. All the photos you will see today are from my walk, and most if not all of them illustrate this. The dramatic sweep of power lines down the valley glinting in the low winter sun really is beautiful, in person and in the photos in my opinion. These photos also illustrate clearly one of the big things about the alps that is different from some other mountainous regions: the Alps are an entirely human landscape, made to be used an lived in with very little 'wild' feeling until you get very far up or very far from civilization...

That's all for now, check the photos at the link and bis bald!

Der Tom

PS in a horribly inconvenient move, google is discontinuing the current platform I use to upload photos. Their replacement is absolutely not the same thing and I will be looking for an alternative. Anyway, though my photos will be preserved online by google, the links used in this blog may cease to work... We shall see what happens when the service starts shutting down in May. If the links do break, I will probably add new links to the newest posts first.