Seven Loipers did a lovely week in the Dolomites in late January, blessed by wonderful blue skies every day. The snow was pretty good too! We stayed in Corvara which is a great location right on the Sella Ronda ski circuit. Whilst the resort and much of the lower slopes were bare of snow, the combination of good snow-making and piste maintenance made for great skiing on-piste. It was a delight to have seven telemarkers skiing together! On some days we had wide open pistes and we all showed off our style, though on other days the skiing was fast and furious and you would not have seen many of us telemarking.
It was a lovely week with great company. Top telemarker Ros has produced this lovely article here!
Interesting to note how we all got there…! Tim and Penny took the Amsterdam ferry and drove all of the way to Dobiacco where they skied for 5 days on the cross-country ski tracks. Ros took the plane from Manchester but had the previous week in Dobiacco where she was acting as coach for the Manchester XC Ski Club. Jon took the most straightforward journey and flew from Manchester, whilst Alan, Neil and David took the long route going by train, via the Eurostar to Amsterdam and the overnight Jet Train to Innsbruck. Fourteen hours overnight on the train was pretty uncomfortable! We just missed out with booking a reservation in one of the sleeping compartments.
Neil and David stayed on in Austria for the hut touring trip in the Stubai Alps (more of which in another news article I hope) and each of them had a solo sleeping cabin for the return journey. But meanwhile Alan had more adventures on his return rail journey, despite reprogramming his Interrail ticket and taking advantage of a daylight train journey from Innsbruck to Amsterdam and then an overnight stay in an (expensive) Amsterdam hotel. On the Sunday morning at Amsterdam Central rail station, everything went wrong with long delays waiting in the departure lounge for the Eurostar train to London and then finally the news that the train was cancelled! Caught in the same situation as a couple of hundred other passengers, none of us knew whether or not the subsequent Eurostar trains were going to run (it seemed probably not – and in any case they were probably already fully booked). Fortunately I learnt from Tim and Penny that the Amsterdam to Newcastle ferry was going to run later that afternoon and I would have a good chance of getting a ticket if I could turn up. An expensive taxi ride took me from Amsterdam to the ferry terminal and I did indeed manage to get a ticket. Exhausted, relieved and very lucky, I found the way to my cabin and I was delighted to join Tim and Penny for a drink in the bar (a lucky coincidence that they were travelling on the same ferry).