In Austria, Saunas, Schnitzel and World Cup Skiing

Written By Unknown on Minggu, 09 Desember 2012 | 17.35

Dominic Ebenbichler for The New York Times

A party atmosphere in Sölden, Austria. More Photos »

ELECTRIC-GREEN Fischer race skis balanced on my shoulder, I passed through the lift entryway at the base of the Rettenbach glacier, waved my arm at the turnstile (the hyper-efficient European smart ski pass was zipped inside my ski jacket), and entered a scrum of Europeans scrambling to grab a seat as the gondolas drifted by, their steel doors yawing open and closed like giant whales feeding on krill.

A few people were balancing skis and lighted cigarettes: we were definitely not at an American ski resort.

I jammed myself between two Swedish teenagers who were training, hoping, to become World Cup or Olympian skiers. After we greeted one another, I turned to settle quietly in for the ride midway up the glacier where every year the ski season's first World Cup race is held.

The cruelly vertiginous slope below our feet was dimpled with course flags. Yet, while this was technically the sport of skiing we were about to watch, the course was not made of snow in the strict soft and fluffy sense of the word. Instead we were gliding over a semi-vertical hockey rink, frozen by a specially equipped Sno-Cat that injects cold water three feet below the surface every night after the mountain closes. As if hurtling your body down a tight giant slalom track at 70 miles an hour wearing nothing but some spandex and a little padding weren't challenging enough.

This is Sölden, Austria, in October, where spectators and skiers come from all over the world to watch the first World Cup race of the season, and the only one in which both sexes compete. When I was there in 2011 Lindsey Vonn, Bode Miller, Maria Riesch, Ted Ligety and dozens of other world-famous skiers were waiting their turn to race on the course below us.

Part of the fun of coming to see a World Cup race is that there is only one way up the mountain for both racers and spectators. Turning to face my gondola passengers, I saw that Ivica Kostelic, an internationally ranked World Cup skier from Croatia known as Ivo, was seated directly across from me. He closed his eyes and moved his hands back and forth in the air, mapping out the run. This would be the skiing equivalent of sitting in the locker room with Roger Federer as he meditates on how to play his next opponent. Everyone in the gondola was respectfully silent (not usually the case).

And the skiing in October is insanely good. For visitors who simply want to ski, the glaciers of Sölden, which generally open for skiing in October, offer impeccable slopes from easy blues to extremely difficult double black diamonds, and the chance to get a jump on the American ski season — so you can arrive in Park City or Sun Valley with a week or two of ski legs under you and several meals of schnitzel and Sacher torte in your belly. Most charmingly, the town of Sölden itself is a rarity. It's not a fake village created to sustain a moneymaking mini-mall of ski lifts and ski shops. Sölden is a true Austrian hamlet, a postcard of a place nestled inside winding roads lined with tamarack trees turning brilliant oranges and yellows in the cool autumn air. It's a remarkably mellow ski town: none of the prefab, faux-village feel of resorts like Whistler; none of the long lift lines to be found in Utah; none of the clubby attitudes of Gstaad or Aspen. The skiers are good, and the crowd — especially around World Cup season — is young, fun and tends toward flip-flops rather than Jimmy Choo booties.

In the bosom of the Tyrolean Alps, Sölden's slopes are perpetually chilled by glacial ice, copiously fed with dumps of natural snow as early as September and supplemented if necessary with a snow-making system that has undergone $70 million of additions in the last five years. (Skeptics of global warming should have a long chat with resort operators about the growing need for snow-making machinery in the last 25 years.)

Speaking as a casual visitor to Germany and Austria, I'd like to report that Austrians are the more Latin of the Teutonic cultures: they tend to be a little more convivial, occasionally hotheaded, and more mystical and spiritual than their neighbor to the north. At our absolutely exquisite, over-the-top hotel, the Hotel Bergland, for instance, the entire top floor is given over to an 18,400-square-foot spa that includes all the perks one might expect — pool, sauna, hot tub, massage rooms — but also two giant meditation areas where silence is strictly enforced. One room features beds packed in lavender-scented straw; the other, warm, gurgling water beds. Tim Dattels, a skier with our group and a connoisseur of ski resorts all over the planet, described our hotel as being one of the best — if not the best — ski hotel he has ever stayed in: "Tyrolean chic without being too Heidi chocolate-boxy."

ALEX KUCZYNSKI, a frequent contributor to The New York Times and an avid skier, recently returned from a ski trip to Chile.


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