After only one day of skiing this gap year trip, we were excited to finally have a week planned for skiing in Cervinia with the Matterhorn as our backdrop, and it was fabulous to have more time with our Slovenian friends.
Patch and I love the mountains, so traveling by bus to Cervinia and seeing the quaint Italian Alpine villages filled us with delight. However, I wasn't prepared for the remarkable views of the Matterhorn and surrounding mountains we had outside our cozy studio chalet.
We weren't quite prepared with the complications of renting ski gear though. The first shop we went to, Patch mentioned that we wanted all mountain skis to go off-piste, just to the side of the runs, and the owner aggressively said he didn't have any, that two snowboarders ruined his gear by going off-piste, and we could rent all mountain gear from Nolski down the road. We thanked him and promptly left. The workers at Nolski were tremendous, and they did everything they could to get us on the correct gear. With my wide feet, Patchen and Amelia's narrow feet, a new ski resort, snow dumping a few days then not snowing other days, we were in the shop a couple of times a day. Finally, by the 5th and final day of skiing, the three of us were happy with our gear. We vowed to never rent gear again.
The Cervinia ski resort was quite different than those of the United States and Innsbruck. There was no lodge at the bottom of the slopes with food, lockers, bathrooms, or parking lot, but instead there was a village with restaurants, rental shops, and lodging. The lift-line operators didn't help or manage the lines, allowing the most pushy people to move through the lines fastest, but waited for someone to request help before helping them. Often they were sitting behind glass in enclosed stations or outside smoking. Many people in other parts of the world smoke, which made us grateful for the strict smoking laws in America.
Their was close to 300 miles of ski runs combining Cervinia and Zermatt, and the smooth, open, groomed runs were about 50 yards wide. The resort is above the treeline, so we didn't get to play in the tress like at home; however, there was enough powder on the sides of the groomed runs that we floated along and found some jumps. One day we took two chair lifts to a gondola which took us to a tram that fit about 100 people like sardines, and we made it to the Zermatt, Switzerland side. There we had a nice lunch and met folks from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and then nervously took two gondolas to a tram to make it back to the Italian side before it got too windy and we were stranded on the Switzerland side.
More pics here.
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