Wedding rehearsal

Posted on March 31, 2016 by Mike

It’s the big day on Saturday, so we’re all summoned to St Laurences for a practice. Walking Jane down the aisle. .

Jane and Richard checking out the high altar.

Really good meeting everyone before the event.

Chez Barr

Posted on March 27, 2016 by Mike

We’ve not seen Steve, Jan and the girls since they left Wengen in February, so it was lovely to see them all last night. Thanks for great company and a delicious dinner!

Packing up

Posted on March 22, 2016 by Mike

Very competitive quiz last night, we ended up in second place behind our mates from Altitude ski school. As this is our last quiz of the season they sportingly shared the prosecco with us.

Val, Alison, Sian and myself made up our team this week.

Today we’ve been packing our belongings into bags and boxes as we’re leaving tomorrow. We’ve been renting this apartment for 7 years now and it’s odd to think that we won’t be coming back to it. We do need to find something a bit cheaper for long stays though, so fingers crossed our plans will come together.

Outside it’s mild, sunny and spring has definitely arrived. Many of the ski lifts will close this weekend, and there’s an end of season atmosphere about the village. A heat haze spoils the view across the valley most afternoons.

Happy Monday

Posted on March 21, 2016 by Mike

It’s another lovely day, and I’ve borrowed Bob’s fat skis again. Deserted pistes at Männlichen.

After a few runs we have coffee and ski round to Scheidegg. From here you can get to a place called Eigergletscher which as the name suggests, is at the foot of the Eiger glacier. Here’s the famous north face.

After lunch things start to get a bit soft and slushy, but despite this we’ve had our best day of the season with almost 5000 vertical metres.

Val has an app which records our route today.

More sunny weather

Posted on March 20, 2016 by Mike

We had a lovely Thai meal at the Bären with Beanie, Sandro and the kids last night. This morning the sun was out again, and we popped over to Murren to escape the weekend crowds.

It’s really warm and the snow is soft and slushy. No problem for Val on her new skis. We had lunch in Lauterbrunnen as it’s half the price of eating at a mountain restaurant, and for the first time this season it’s warm enough for ice creams on the balcony.

Vertical Up

Posted on March 19, 2016 by Mike

We’ve seen, and taken part in plenty of crazy sporting events here over the years. We played football on Salzegg under the Eiger north face, snow bike racing, you can even have a game of golf on the Lauberhorn in summer if you fancy it. And of course there’s the pool race at the end of the season. None of these even approaches today’s event however. You might remember that back in January we had a world cup ski race here. The course is 4.4 kilometres long, and it has a vertical drop of just over 1000 metres. It goes from the top of the Lauberhorn down to Innerwengen just below the village. Today’s challenge is to complete the course in reverse. That’s right, you start at the bottom and race to the top. It’s called the Vertical Up.

There are no rules concerning how you might accomplish this, as long as you don’t use anything motorised. Skis are ok for example.

Fancy dress is encouraged.

Here’s Georg from Central Sport. You might remember him piloting the Space Shuttle in the pool race last year.

Lining up for the start.

And off they go.

The first 50 metres is a gentle meadow. This doesn’t last long. The Zeilschuss comes next.

The winner will take 30 or 40 minutes to complete the course apparently. To put that into context, if you were to go to the finish from here using the train and a couple of lifts, it would take you just as long as the winner will do it on foot.