Exploring The Great Outdoors

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Until August, I will be in Holland for an internship. If you did not know, I am crazy about skiing. One of the reasons why I did not want to leave the States as early as I did was because I had not gotten enough skiing days in. I had gone to Sunday River on November 7th and then to Loon later. Granted, the conditions had not become great until the second week in January 2011, but I still wish that I had gone a few more times. However, I then decided that I was just going to have to go skiing in the Alps to make up for it!

Unfortunately, in order to get to the mountains, my transportation options are very limited, thus far I have only seen a “deal” where I have to pay 150 Euros for a train that arrives in the French Alps at noon and leaves at 5pm. I would also have to then pay for the skiing ticket and the rentals. The cheaper option would be to take a 10 hour train one Friday leave the next Saturday (most trains only go on Fridays and come back on Saturday). Unfortunately, because I work a 40 hour workweek Monday through Friday, I only have the weekends to travel.

Thus, my plans to go to the Alps in the winter have essentially failed. Instead, I have hopes to go to Zermatt, Switzerland in the summer. There are only a few places that stay open and Zermatt is the biggest of them all. It also happens to be the only resort, or so I have heard, that stays open for the whole entire year. Twenty-five kilometres of pistes and eight ski lifts remain open all summer.

Summer skiing is completely different from winter skiing. For one, it’s warm out. Secondly, there are only a few trails and they are usually pretty flat — thus great for beginners. Plus, you won´t be skiing the whole mountain, you’ll only be on the very top of  the mountain. However, the really cool thing about summer skiing is that you might be able to ski with the pros who are looking to train for their seasons. Zermatt is where most of the pros and teams go. Summer skiing is typically on a glacier, so they are wide trails that are groomed. However, Zermatt offers some more advanced trails.