2019 - 2020 Far West Skier's Guide - 62

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Our guide, Sämi Balsiger, found virgin snow for us every day despite the fact that it had not snowed for some time.

Parsenn. That in and of itself was a mode of
uphill transportation that I had never seen before. From the top of the Parsenn, we skied
the 9-kilometer descent to the neighboring village of Klosters, where we ate lunch.
The next day, we went that one better.
At the end of the ski day, mom led me on the
12-kilometer run to Küblis. There, we stopped
in a Konditorei for a pastry and ultimately
boarded a train and rode the rails back to
Davos. It was truly very civilized, and I was
beginning to understand the differences between skiing in the States and in the Alps. The
comparison went beyond the size of the resorts and the length of the runs - there was
also a marked difference in style and atmosphere. At Blue Ridge, we might finish the
ski day with a robust bowl of chili and saltine
crackers at the counter of a diner in Wrightwood; while in Klosters, we rested our posteriors in comfortable antique sofa chairs, while
an elegantly clad waiter brought us cakes and
cappuccino.
Since that long-ago introduction to the
Alps, my mother has long ago passed on, and
I have returned on various occasions to
Davos. Last winter, I again visited this wonderful Swiss resort. More than 40 winter seasons, 4,000 ski days, and 500 ski hills have
glided under my boards since that first visit
with my mom, but the years and all my added
ski adventures have not changed my perception of Davos and the surrounding ski villages.
The number of lifts and the kilometers of
pistes have, of course, increased in the ensuing
years, while the elegance and style that I first

experienced in my youth are still firmly intact.
Today, the ski region offers more than 50 lifts,
and well over 300 kilometers of pistes. And,
when it comes to an ambiance of grace and
cultivation, who would know better than
Prince Charles and the British royal family,
who have been regular guests in Klosters for
many years?
Even with all those kilometers of pistes,
I have always been more interested in the vast
stretches of virgin snow that lie between the
pistes, and to that end, my friend Robert Heim
and I enlisted the services of a local guide,
Sämi Balsiger. It was a fortuitous decision.
There had been no snowfall for a few days
prior to our visit, but Sämi had no problem
finding many locations with virgin powder.
Sämi began our tour by taking us up as
high as one can get in Davos - the 2844-meterhigh Weissfluhgipfel. From there, with very little effort, our leader led us around to the steep
back side of the mountain onto a shady virgin
called Direttissima. That no freerider had defiled this virgin in the days since the last precipitation was a mystery, and we gleefully sent
the dry powder flying.
For old time's sake, we skied the run to
Küblis. It is an intermediate run that undulates and winds forever, dropping more than
2000 vertical meters before the trail finally
meanders into the village. Here we stayed on
the piste. The snow was not great - a bit icy,
but that didn't matter. I was skiing this one for
mom, and I could feel her smiling all the while.
On my initial visit, mom and I only had
a few days, and our skiing was limited to the

world famous Parsenn-Klosters region. However, Davos actually has four additional separate mountains, Pischa, Jakobshorn, Rinerhorn, and the Schatzalp-Strela, which is
owned by a different company and requires a
separate lift pass. On this visit, Sämi wanted
to share with us all of the local mountains, so
that we would get a more complete picture of
his playground than the usual one that the
average tourist sees.
Schatzalp is perhaps the oddest of these
ski resorts, and one with an unusual history
to boot. Way back in 1899, a funicular railway
was completed to a plateau 300 vertical
meters up the mountain. This train connected
the village with a sanatorium that specialized
in patients with tuberculosis and other lung
disorders. In 1912, the wife of the famous German novelist, Thomas Mann, was treated in
that clinic for a few months, and Mann used
the location as the setting for his famous novel
Zauberberg (The Magic Mountain), which was
first published in 1924.
The first ski lift on the mountain was
erected in 1937, and ultimately, there were
three lifts in this little resort, extending to the
wide, open slopes above the sanatorium and
the tree line. Some years later, in 1954, when
the focus of Davos's tourism was in the process of converting from that of a spa village to
its more modern identity as a ski resort, the
spectacular Art Nouveau sanatorium was
converted into the Berghotel Schatzalp.
The new century, however, again saw
some major changes, and the ski lifts were
closed down in 2002, leaving the sledding

62 Far West Skier's Guide 2O18 - 2O19 / Visit the Digital Edition at www.fwsa.org.

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2019 - 2020 Far West Skier's Guide

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