Arosa & Andermatt, Switzerland
23rd January–2nd February 2008
It had been 7 years since my previous holiday with Telemark Ski Company (aka John Eames and Bonny Masson), so why try again? The main reason is that they provide a wide range of different types of courses in different resorts. As far as I can tell, there is nobody else out there with this depth and breadth.
You will have to wait to find out all about my latest experience with the Telemark Ski Company, as first I managed to sneak a couple of extra days skiing with the Arosa regulars. As organised as ever, I was texting Sylvia from the airport requesting the name and location of the hotel. It was an easy but good 3 hour drive from Basel Airport to Arosa.
The fun starts in Chur with apparently 365 bends in the 30km of road up to Arosa. The road is narrow and was covered in patches of snow and ice. After about 150 bends, I got a text from Sylvia saying the hotel was shutting for the night in 30 minutes. Being given this sort of information on a narrow, winding, snowy road is not conducive to a long life, but I made it with 10 minutes to spare.
I had two lovely days of skiing in Arosa. The weather was scorching (too hot really). On the first morning, I was the gooseberry skiing around in my helmet with Andy and Beach in their afro and blonde wigs. No one blinked an eyelid when Andy kept the wig on to give us a lesson in the afternoon. This was a useful session concentrating on skidding in both parallel and telemark turns to control speed, and I got a lot out of it. Perhaps the wig was finally providing some gravitas.
After the first two days of skiing in the season in my customary style, my quadriceps are generally shot and due a rest.
The third day was conveniently a travel day and after the zip on my infamous salopettes had terminally failed when alone with Sylvia, a shopping day also beckoned. I was sad to say goodbye to my Sprayway 20/20 Line Salopettes. They had seen me through many years of service, much of which was a period where going down the hill on my behind was a normal and necessary part of skiing. Because of this abuse, the Gore-Tex material was increasingly supplemented with Duct Tape. I would apply different colours of Duct Tape depending on my mood and what Homebase had in stock. A bright blue colour (say) would be more of a conversation piece on the slope. It was a poor man’s afro wig, if you like.
Anyway the local town Chur, renowned for being the oldest town in Switzerland, sorted me out on the salopette front. Sprayway is now Mammut and I sadly drove on my way to Andermatt. This was not as uneventful as I had expected it to be. It was my first time driving in Switzerland and wet behind the ears I expected what looked like a reasonably major road on the map to be open, which of course it was not, despite closely tracking the operational railway. As I got to Sedrun, I was 90% of the way to my destination as the crow flies before I realised my error. It looked like I would need to retrace my steps almost all the way back to Chur with a convoluted onward journey, but I then I saw a train transporting cars up the hill. The ingenious Swiss strike yet again!
This line is part of the Glacier Express which stretches from Zermatt to St. Moritz.
It turns out that the Oberalp Pass section from Sedrun to Andermatt is the highest on the whole line (2033m). No wonder the road was shut.
“Get on with it”. Who said that?
After the normal pleasantries of a course introduction and evening meal, I unloaded the car and dumped the gear in the room that I was sharing with Joe, a telemarker from Calgary living in Antwerp and working in Cologne. The room was spacious but the sleeping arrangements were very cosy. It was basically a large double bed with 2 single mattresses pushed together and 2 quilts. In circumstances such as these, I am more concerned for the other party being a heavy sleeper, but it worked out fine.
Is that the best dirt I can dig on this holiday? Well, I would have to say that it was really. John and Bonny seem to subcontract out a significant proportion of their courses to other telemark instructors. Indeed there were two courses in this week and rather than Bonny take the second course, they had hired in another instructor. John took our group. Our group was on a full day coaching format, although I would kill to be on this definition of “full days” in my line of work.
We would catch the bus at 9.15am in the morning and John would finish skiing by 3.30pm, with 45 minutes for lunch. Having said that, I was happy with the quality rather than quantity approach for this holiday. I must be getting old.
Bonny on the other hand did bits of coaching here and there. She did a morning with the sole alpine skier on the course, but the rest of the time she typically skied with us in the afternoon providing little more than the odd hint here and there.
She seemingly spends more time on the commercial needs of the business which I guess makes sense if they are running an increased number of courses with less direct coaching involvement from themselves. After this week was over, they were coming back to the UK for a 4 week stint, which seemed bizarre in the midst of the ski season.
As for the skiing, Andermatt is billed as a resort for free-riding that is off piste skiing but connecting into the network of lifts. In my opinion, it is not quite on a par with the free riding area of Monterosa in Val d’Aosta, Italy. In Andermatt, the off piste tours are greater in length (1.5–2 hours) and involve returning to the bottom of the main gondola lift sometimes by train. This means that you could probably do a maximum of 2 such tours in a day. The stretches of off-piste at Monterosa are significantly shorter and my recollection is that runs back to a lift within the resort were typically 30 minutes or so. For a course such as this, one could probably argue that Monterosa would be more suitable. Both Andermatt and Monterosa would not be my choice for a piste only holiday.
This makes it sound that Andermatt was in some way disappointing, but with the way the course was structured, it fully met my expectations of what I had been hoping to get out of the course. In the morning, John would give us some instruction on piste and in the afternoon we would try it out off piste.
Despite the fact that there were 8 in the group, the group was of a similar standard and therefore worked well. John’s teaching was as ever excellent and believe it or not, there was not an Afro in sight.
author: Graham Aspinall
publish date: May 2008
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