Skiing at Axamer-Lizum (2)

When we (Tim Forward and I, Caecilia Werth, and Liselotte Schartner) were done skiing at Axamer-Lizum and the slope up Birgitzkoepfl (and hiking up the mountain with our skis slung over our shoulders after a run), we had a wonderful shortcut home back to Innsbruck.

From the top of Birgitzkoepfl, you could take a gently downhill slope across the flank of a beautiful mountain called Nockspitze that eventually took you to the Muttere-Alm ski area. This was a long hike that crossed some areas with signs that warned "Lawine Gefahr!" --that is, avalanche danger. When they warned against avalanches in Tirol, they weren't fooling around. If you got caught in one, they would find your body under tons of snow, trees, rock, and mud--in the summer!

After this long cross-country hike, you got to ski down the slope at Mutters, until you reached the street car tracks. From there, it was a nice street car ride back to Innsbruck's Stadtzentrum. And from there, I could walk home to my pension in Schmelzergasse in less than a half hour.

All in all, a wonderful day of skiing!

Skiing at Axamer-Lizum, outside Innsbruck, Austria

I lived in Salzburg and then Innsbruck, Austria from August 1967 to June 1968, one of 36 guys in the University of Notre Dame's Innsbruck Study-Abroad Program. Recently I was thinking about one glorious day in late winter, probably March of 1968, when I skied with three friends at the spectacular ski area called Axamer-Lizum, about 10 miles outside the city of Innsbruck. My friends and I had skied often at Lizum (as we called it), where the Damenabfahrt (Women's Downhill) ski run from the 1964 Olympics took place. The ski area was at a very high elevation, with lifts going up a peek on one side called "Hoadl," and a lift going up the opposite side of the valley to "Birgitzkoepfl." On the eastern edge of this area was the most spectacular mountain scenery in Tirol--the incredible limestone spires called the Kalkkoegl (see photo above).

On this particular day, Tim Forward and I went skiing with two Austrian friends that we had met in Obergurgl, Austria when we were at a week-long youth ski school. These friends worked at a governmental office in Innsbruck called the "Forstlichebundesversuchsanstalt"--what a wonderful German name!--The Federal Institute for the Experimental Study of Forests--or something like that. These girls were Caecilia Werth (now known as Cilli Kirchmair) and Liselotte Schartner). Someone had jokingly warned us Americans never to invite an Austrian girl to go hiking (you'll end up on an exhausting day-long hike!); they should have warned us never to go skiing with Austrian girls. Because Caecilia and Liselotte couldn't afford to buy lift tickets. We spent the entire day hiking up Birgitzkoepfl and skiing down that slope--over and over again. We felt like we were the first people in the history of the world to ski that slope without ever buying a lift ticket (by American standards, the lift tickets weren't all that expensive; by Austrian standards of 1968, they were pretty dear).

[More coming!]