Skiing — Day 6: Last day of skiing in the Niederau area

The last day of my trip to the Niederau ski area

January 2015

My last day of skiing. Always a sad day.

For my last day, I decided to go over to Auffach and then finish the trip by returning to Niederau for one last ski from the top down to the ski hire shop.

Skiing the Auffach area

The snow conditions at Auffach were pretty good. However, there were numerous brown spots where the piste-bashers had broken through the base and hit the underlying dirt. The place desperately needs some more snow.

Slopes were full of school kids. It was like skiing through a playground.

Coffee stop at Auffach — Gipfo Hit

I stopped for a coffee at Gipfo Hit, near the top of Schatzberg. Nice place. Very large restaurant with waitress service. The loos were downstairs. Why are the loos always downstairs? Don’t the architects know how difficult stairs are in ski boots? Lots of seating. And it had free Wi-Fi.

Lunch stop at Koglmoos, Auffach

I stopped at Koglmoos for lunch.

Koglmoos is at the mid-station of the main gondola out of Auffach and is a typical self-service mountain restaurant.

Skiing Auffach

I had a good day skiing over at Auffach.

The snow conditions were generally good, but the covering was quite thin in places. The mountain was quiet with no lift lines, but there did seem to be a lot of school kids having lessons.

The weather was mixed. Some light snow at one point. Even some sun. It was windy, and snow was being blown off the top of the mountain. The wind did not impact the lower slopes where it was light.

In the afternoon, the snow on the lower slopes turned quite slushy.

The last runs at Niederau

I caught the ski bus back from Auffach to Niederau for my last couple of runs of the trip.

I took the main gondola up the mountain and skied the routes to the left. The snow was slushy. It was spring skiing in January. It was also windy, but the snow wasn’t blowing away as it was very slushy.

Niederau needed fresh snow. The cover was very thin, and there was a lot of brown snow (brown snow will absorb heat faster and melts and won’t easily re-freeze). The weather was very warm, so a lot of snow was being lost.

That evening, the temperature was 4 ºC, and it poured with rain. And the rain continued overnight.

After the heavy rain, the temperature increased to 9 ºC.

There is also quite a bit of water running off the mountain and sitting on the slopes.

My last evening in the Cave — Nails in Austria

This is something I had not seen before — a game called Nails.

The aim of Nails is to knock the nail into the block of wood. The game is played with two or more people, with each player taking turns to hit their nail into the wood.

At the start of the game, the nail is hammered into the wood until it stands. Then each player has a go — one swing of the hammer — to knock their nail into the block. Players keep taking turns until someone hits their nail fully into the block.

Sounds easy.

It is not.

The hammerhead can’t be lined up directly with the nail, plus the head of the hammer is hollow. Tricky!

There also seems to be a forfeit for the loser — typically in the form of drinks for the other players.