Skiing — Day 2: Skiing Niederau, Austria
Day 2 of skiing Niederau — time to move on?
January 2015
On the second night, we had quite a bit of snow. The groomers had been out busy bashing the piste. And so I was looking forward to an exciting day on the mountain.
Unfortunately, the snow conditions were not great. The new snow has frozen and then ground into “ice marbles”. Some of the runs were very hard, with skis clattering across a loose surface of “ice marbles” and “ice gravel” — it was challenging to get an edge.
This is not a great photo, but it does show how lumpy the snow was on day 2.
Parts of the mountain from the Lanerkopflbahn lift were almost unskiable. They were solid ice with no snow cover.
Large sections of the mountain had been groomed just after the rain on the Saturday night, and the tracks from the piste-bashers were frozen into the ice. This made for some very ‘rattly’ skiing. It was dangerous out there.
Hot chocolate break — Niederau
Mid-morning, I stopped for a hot chocolate at Kropfraderaln, a self-service restaurant at the bottom of the Kropfraderjochlift drag lift.
Piste Chapel, Niederau, Austria
Near the top of Markbachjoch, below the top of the Kropfraderjochlift drag, is a small chapel.
The inside of the chapel is quite remarkable and worth a look.
There were several memorial tablets on the wall.
And the views from the chapel were very good.
Lunch stop at Rubezahlhutte
The Rubezahlhutte is located on a short ski to the left of the top of the Markbachjochbahn gondola.
The restaurant is a nice little place, very Austrian, with no Wi-Fi. I ordered food at the counter, so it was sort of self-service.
I had a new dish — a steamed bun with a ham filling. The bun was served with custard — an odd mix.
The bun was excellent and went great with coffee.
The restaurant also has a pretty good panoramic view section.
Summary of skiing Niederau
After a couple of days, I had covered the whole ski area many times. There was not a lot on offer. For a week of skiing, I could get very bored.
The mountain is not huge and is skiable in a morning.
There are two lifts, a gondola up the centre of the mountain and a high-speed quad to the right. All the other lifts were drags.
The most varied terrain was off the gondola, with a mixture of blues and reds. But, there are no runs from the gondola to the bottom of the mountain that are blue all the way down.
Also, from the gondola, the main runs on the left of the mountain require a short uphill push to get to them. Only the runs below the gondola are accessible without the need to go uphill.
It is possible to cross over to the quad lift area (the right-hand side of the mountain) from the gondola. But this requires a rope drag and a considerable amount of uphill skiing.
The ‘quad area’ is all black runs, apart from the crossover area back to the gondola.
This is a tough mountain for a beginner, as the only blue (easy) runs are down low and only accessible from drag lifts. Once up the hill, there are no easy runs.
Niederau is a great day, or locals’, mountain. It has some challenging runs, but it would become boring for a week-long skiing holiday.
There is an extensive ski area 20 minutes down the road by bus. And it is in that area I spent the rest of the week skiing.
