Engelberg_Magazin_No_15

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that are way above the ten-metre mark. Let ’s just go back to Zöggel for a moment, and to the still-sma ll f reeriding scene of the 80s and 90s. Zöggel gave ever y f reerider at the time a nick- name. He himself was ca lled Oil Change, for his orange Descente ski suit that was speck led with oil-coloured f lecks. The Swiss nationa l ski team wore the same suits. Oil Change re- a lly did look like a car mechanic at the end of a par ticu larly long day. Now let ’s leave the rocks of the Su lzli basin – and the anecdotes – behind us and continue on down to Trübsee. The Laub, a freeride Gerschnia lp, which lies 1,200 metres below us, takes ever yone’s breath away. The f reerid- ers on the lower sec tion of the slope look tiny. I’ve skied mountains a ll over the world, but I have never found a slope with an incline more suited to skiing than this one. Not many people know why this run descends so even ly. The Laub is the sliding sur face of a massive landslide that happened at the end of the last great ice age and formed Engelberg’s f lood- plain. People have long known that the Laub is an excellent descent. It appears on ski maps f rom as far back as the 1950s and even before the Trübsee-Stand-Titlis cableway opened. The histor y of of f-piste skiing goes back even f ur ther than that. At the f irst internationa l ski meet in Engelberg in the winter of 1903/1904 , Scandinav ian Leif Berg wowed ever yone with his 29-minute schuss f rom the top of Titlis down to Trübsee. Since there were no prepared pistes at the time, it was a f reeride by neces- sity. We cross to the (skier’s) right and take the slope in a league of its own : Now the group is ready for a rea l treat: the Laub. The Rinder titlis and Laubersgrat chairlif ts bring us easily up to the star t. The v iew of the

rather less steep Laubschu lter. A lthough the snow isn’ t billowing up over our heads – as I’ve known it to do here many times before – it ’s still surprisingly powder y and we get a good ride. But even if we had the best snow in the world, it wou ld be a mistake to let it blind us to the terrain we are on. The date 23 Februar y 1996 is still etched in my memor y. Zöggel and I had just ridden the Laubschu lter twice in deep powder snow. We were young and still a bit reck less – I’ d on ly just begun my mountain guide training. As we began our third descent,

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www.sportingpark.ch Spor ting Park Engelberg Engelbergerstra sse 11 CH-6390 Engelberg Phone +41 41 639 60 00 info@spor tingpark.ch

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our hair sudden ly stood on end. A ll over the lef t-hand, steeper side of the Laub, the rocks and a lder were showing through, even though they had been covered in metres of snow just moments ago. A

“I have never found a slope with an incline more suited to skiing than the Laub.”

Skifahren lernen war noch nie so einfach Learning to ski has never been so easy

Erfolg ist Ansporn zu mehr.

massive ava lanche – triggered by a snowboard- er – had just hit and had taken ever y thing with it. I don’ t think I’ ll ever forget that experi- ence and it a lways reminds me to be caref u l. Saving the best for last: But today is a good, safe day and so we top it of f with the Ga ltiberg – my favourite descent of them a ll. From the Titlis lif t, we begin by sweep- ing across the Ga ltiberg glacier, then on to the glorious slopes that lie in the shade of the rocks of the nor th face of the Titlis, a long the snowy hiking trails in the forests of the Bödmen a lp and, f ina lly, down into the va l- ley f loor in Engelberg. We f inish the day in the Wasser fa ll restaurant, and the whole group agrees that f reeriding doesn’ t neces- sarily need f resh powder snow to be a rush.

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