Inside Tracks

Winter round up

It is now nearly the end of April and the ski season is over, yet I am getting reports from friends in the Alps telling me that they are currently enjoying the best powder conditions of the winter. Curiously the winter seems to be ending the way it started, when there were fantastic conditions in November. In between it was unusually mild and it felt like spring since early January! In spite of the topsy turvy weather the skiing was still remarkably good and the pistes were kept in great condition throughout. The runs down the valley below Klosters suffered from the balmy weather and were not skiable most of the time, but apart from that it was as good a season as ever.

There were many highlights to our winter. We had 3 off piste weekends, including our Ladies Off Piste Weekend in March which seems to be growing in popularity. Every time we host one of these weekends I am reminded how fortunate we are to be operating in Klosters where there is so much scope. Generally our weekends were well timed to coincide with fresh snow and there were some pretty special days as a result. Our season ending Silvretta Ski Safari, a four day hut to hut ski tour, was a proper adventure. For the first 2 days it was ridiculously hot, 25C in the valley, precipitating some early starts so that we were finished before the afternoon sun made the slopes too dangerous. We had fabulous views from the tops of Hintere Jamspitz (3153m) and Ochsenkopf (2977m). The tour finished in a snow storm meaning our last turns of the winter were in powder snow.

We ran 2 family weeks over the course of the winter. The first was at half term and the second was in the first week of the Easter school holidays. Our kids courses on both occasions saw a lot smiles and triumphs, especially from our youngest guests who were all fabulous and improved enormously. We benefitted from the early Easter with the Madrisa which is so perfect for novice skiers being open for the whole of our Easter week. Our teen offering continues to be popular and it was pleasing to see our Alpine Cruisers, which we started a year ago to complement PT All Mountain, seeing a fresh cohort of young wanting to ski the pistes with their friends.

Away from the slopes, we decided to arrange more walking opportunities during the day for non skiers, or those who just felt like a break from skiing. Sos P-T has now built up quite a repertoire of routes of varying lengths to take people on and which nearly always involve a coffee stop. Klosters is so picturesque and it was nice to see this side of Alpine life which is so often overlooked really starting to flourish.

Lastly, no season is successful without the assistance of a great team. We were fortunate that Sybilla and Annie, our two season reps, were such stars, and a huge thank you goes to them and our peak week team who joined us at half term and Easter for helping us make our guests' ski holidays so special.