Some Snow
My series of posting a new blog entry every week is a little bit broken this time as I spent some days skiing in Filzmoos in Austria. So I hope you don’t mind when this post is online a little bit later than usual. It’s sometimes a hard to sit down and take the time to write these posts when you’re on the go.
1/577, f/1.8, ISO 20, 3.99 mm, iPhone 7
The good thing about it is that I’m posting more recent pictures now that are more connected to the present and hopefully are matching the current season of the year more accurately. I was a little bit resentful as my last post about the Seiser Alm with so much green and blooming flowers was posted in the midst of January where most people expect seeing snow, ice and faded colors. So sticking with more recent photos will certainly help me to match seasons more appropriately.
The image above was taken in the morning of our first day in Filzmoos as a view from our hotel. You can see how much snow has fallen down in front of the window.
Filzmoos is a tiny town not too far from Schladming in the state of Salzburg. It is famous for its peculiar looking mountain, the Bischofsmütze. There aren’t too many slopes and ski lifts around Filzmoos, but there’s often a lot of snow and it’s beautifully quiet and with a lot of room for nice ski turns. The atmosphere is very familiar, the operators of the ski lifts are waving their “Servus” to everyone passing by. So for a few days of skiing it’s definitely enough diversity even for ambitious skiing, but I wouldn’t recommend it for a weeklong stay. That said Filzmoos is also part of (link: https://www.skiamade.com/en text: Ski amade) with more than 270 ski lifts connected in one ski pass. I wouldn’t try using the Ski amade pass staying in Filzmoos though as the town is a little off the centre of the whole region and the other associated communities and lifts are a bit hard to reach from there.
As we arrived a lot of snow fell down. There have been at least 3 days of continuous snowfall. So we spent our first day with really stormy conditions and without a view walking up to the Hofalmen by foot. There are also sleighs going up there. We had a lovely meal in the Oberhofalm and in the afternoon we went down again. In the evening there were 50 cm of fresh snow. All the parked cars were hidden under a curvy snow cover.
The day afterwards the sun came out and we spend some wonderful days skiing in the fresh snow. We really had perfect conditions. Basically the skiing area of Filzmoos is divided into two parts, on the one hand there’s the Papagenobahn, which is a northern slope with good snow conditions and with slopes that are a little bit steeper, on the other hand the Grossbergbahn on the opposite site with beautifully spacious slopes, a lot of them marked blue and which are rather easy to ride. Together they complete each other very well. We really had good fun going up and down. There are also two important drag lifts that are a little bit older. Maybe they should be replaced in the future but on the other hand they add up to the retro charme of Filzmoos.
In the end I can only recommend giving Filzmoos a try when you’re looking for an alternative destination to spent some time in the snow. Both the skiing area and the winter trails are charming, especially in the fresh snow when every noise is softened. You can even book some hot air balloon rides starting in the centre of Filzmoos.