Location Report - Engelberg, Switzerland

27-28 Feb 2022

Came to check out Engelberg’s reputation – a quiet, family town with big mountain riding - and doing that with a friend still suffering from long-covid tiredness two years later. Worse than that though, he was on slalom skiis…though with his skills, that’s is no real handicap. So, no touring, a lot of piste and whatever side-country that’s easy to get to.

Conditions

Two bluebird days, in the just-negative degrees-C all day, with strong winds only up high.

Avi level 2 about a week after the last snowfall. It seems this area (including down to Andermatt) hasn’t had the usual amount of snow, and was a bit thin in some wind-exposed aspects. We chatted to several lefties and pisteurs asking about the stability of the snow and good places to ride off-piste - they were all pretty blasé, saying we could go anywhere and just enjoy ourselves – but maybe stay off the glaciated bits from the top-lift. My mate was going to rent avi gear for the off-piste but these fellows were saying that wasn’t necessary - a little shocking to hear from the pisteurs, even for level 2…

The pistes were well-groomed in the mornings but because it was cold all day most had turned into hard sheets of artificial snow by the mid-afternoon. Great in the first half of the day though.

Off-piste, more west-facing slopes were best attempted in the afternoons when they’d softened up a bit, but there are lots of more northerly-facing slopes where the snow was in good condition all day and where if we pushed further to the sides there was some clear lines still to be had in 20-30cm deep snow.

The area accessed by the Jochstock Express lift

About as big a difference as you can get?

Doesn’t rotate fast enough to get dizzy…

What went down

Yup – I see why it has the reputation I thought it has – there’s some serious big mountain stuff going on here, facing west through to north. The incredibly gnarly terrain means limited places to stick pistes, giving lots of complex terrain in between – a lot of it lift-accessible.

That complex terrain can take a little familiarisation, there is a lot of rock here, in the shape of cliff-bands, so picking your line needs some thought. And there are some glaciated areas up high.

We hit the off-piste itinerary down to the Engstlensee from the top of the Jochstock Express lift. Short hikes at the top and bottom putting enough people off so that there were still some fresh lines still there to be had.

One of the the classic offpiste runs here is Laub - visible from the town, a massive face with a ton of options across it. We opted to leave it for our last run, lost 30 mins somewhere and were 1 minute too late for the last lift we needed for it… I know… next time, because there will be a next time.

On the pistes - euro-carving! Well, first attempts, and not too convincing. Because of the complex terrain we found only a few pistes suitable for big wide carving. I am riding a Furberg Freeride 170, with a Phantom hardboot and binding set up – this is a great combination for big wide carves, especially with the Furberg’s Floorboard technology tongue-and-groove giving my split a real solid feel.

What didn’t go down was any après! Engelberg is a very quiet town. Though having said that, on the first night, with both of us desperately needing some sleep, we were kept awake by a carnival drum band playing literally underneath our hostel window...

All in all, if you can afford Switzerland, Engelberg is definitely worth a visit to get your big-mountain fix. Our hostel cost about 50quid a night each in the hostel part of Hotel Engelberg (great breakfast; very thin walls between rooms…), so, reasonable-ish. The lift pass was an eye-watering £120 for 2 days… mind you, you do get a rotating telecabine up the very top of the glacier....