March

We were busy watching the St. Anton website, so when we saw it had snowed 70 cm we packed our bags and headed back the very next weekend. We found some really great snow, but also hundreds of other people with the same idea, the queues were horrendous. We had underestimated how warm it had been so had to be careful picking which slopes to ski as the avalanche warning was level 4. The shady slopes were the best. We only made the mistake of skiing Mattun once (sunny slope) it was deep porridge from mid way down, a real leg killer. We both needed a beer after surviving that! Michelle did part three of her course, she is still really enthusiastic about it. She received the information about her exam in December and the homework she has to deliver a month before, suddenly she is a little freaked about the whole thing. The 17th we spent Heli-skiing in the Jungfrau region. We left Lauterbrunnen about 8 AM and headed up through the mountains over amazing scenery of glaciers, mountains, crevasses. By the time we landed for the first we had already had a fantastic day! The first run was from 3800m down to 2400m then another flight took us up to 3200m for a run down to1700. During the first run we stopped at a mountain hut for a "coffee". Those 2 runs took us all morning, the scenery was amazing, we even saw the wreckage of the mountain hut destroyed by an avalanche 2 weeks ago, that was a bit worrying. The snow was very mixed from really nice slightly slushy snow, to crusty and very hard snow. We started the day in the Canton of Bern and ended up on the other side of the alps in the Canton of Wallis. Last week in March saw us back in St. Anton, we stayed out in Pettneu with Alois. The snow was surprisingly good, we were a bit concerned after the heavy snow at the beginning of the month. The Saturday was probably the best day of the season, it had snowed on Friday and we had untracked deep powder to play in. It was fantastic. The week was fun with some happy familiar faces and some great new people. Alois also found some fantastic snow (firn and powder), including the hike up to Rendlsharte. Michelle has done this hike up before this year, and made it up in just under one hour, a new personal best. We also spent a great evening up at Wurgl Alois's hunting hut. We had a traditional meal of pork knuckles and sauerkraut with lots of beer and schnapps. The sunset from up there was beautiful. Unfortunately Michelle got Bronchitis and had to miss ski school on a couple of days. Petra a Pharmacist in our group, kept on supplying Michelle with all sorts of cures. Petra was a lot of fun, we are hoping to get up to Hamburg over the summer months to visit her. On the last day we free skied with Olaf Petra and Brigitte.