Skiing in Austria (Part 2)

My NotreDame-Innsbruck friends and I skied all around Innsbruck (and adjacent countries, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland). In Innsbruck we skied occasionally on the mountain called "Patscherkofl," just south and east of Innsbruck by the beautiful village of Igls. You took a Seilbahn, a cable car, up Patscherkofel, and got off about 300 hundred meters below the bald, treeless peak of this characteristic mountain of the Innsbruck area. I believe it was possible to ski from the very top, but the snow could be sparse and icy, and the winds could be ferocious without any tree cover at all. We would ski down a trail through the forest called the "Herrenabfahrt," the men's downhill run from the 1964 Winter Olympics. If you wanted scary, this was scary, especially if, like a downhill racer, you went full out through the forest. A false move, an icy patch, and you could be dead. I traversed, crisscrossed, the trail, slowing my speed and increasing my safety.

Another place we skied was on the Nordkette, the northern chain of mountains just north of Innsbruck and the Inn River valley. This involved taking a funicular train from the valley floor up to Hungerburg, and then a cable car up to the area called "Seegrube," about 2000 meters of elevation above see level. There was a decent ski area at Seegrube and a nice terrace to sit in the sun on warm days (which were fairly rare). If you were very brave and crazy, you could take the final step, via cable car, to the very top of the Nordkette, the peak called "Hafelekar," and try to ski the narrow and incredibly steep shoot, 1000 feet vertical drop, from Hafelekar to Seegrube. Then, you could ski the zigzaggy trail, perhaps a mile long, the rest of the way down to Hungerburg. From there, the funicular back to the Inn Valley and Innsbruck (except, if you were cheap and broke, like I was, you could walk the train track back to the city. Brian Wilson and I did that one time and my thighs ached for 2 weeks).

Who did I ski with most often? It's hard to say, but I imagine my ski companions included Tim Forward, Brian Wilson, crazy Patty Laflin, Bob Wingerson, and really most of the other Notre Dame-Innsbruckers. Only a couple didn't ski.

Uebrigens, by the way, Tim Forward is an architect, Brian Wilson a pediatrician, crazy and brave Patty Laflin became an FBI agent, and I've lost track of Bob Wingerson, but I believe he still lives in the Detroit area.

[More coming in "Skiing in Austria, Part 3"]

Skiing from Hafelekar Peak in Innsbruck, Austria

One time in my life (1968) I skied from the mountain peak shown here, Hafelekar, a peak in the Nordkette ("Northern Chain") of the Karwendel-Gebirge (Karwendel Mountain Range), just north of Innsbruck, in the Austrian province of Tirol. It was scary! Note the avalanche-preventing devices surrounding the steep and narrow Schuss. Holy Toledo!

Serles: Great Mountain Guarding the Wipptal & Brenner

The image to the left is of the great mountain called "Serles," which lies just to the south of Innsbruck, Austria, and "guards," so to speak, the entrance to the Stubai Valley (Stubaital) and the Wipp Valley (Wipptal) and the Brenner Pass. About 20 miles to the south of Serles is the Italian-Austrian frontier.

Serles can be climbed without great difficulty, though the last stretch to the peak is a bit challenging. I climbed this mountain on Sonnwendtag (Summer Solstice) in June of 1968 with my Austrian friend Caecilia Werth and some of her companions from the neighboring village of Matrei-am-Brenner. The view from the peak of Serles is truly "herrlich," awesome. One can see the Inn River Valley, the city of Innsbruck, as well as the peaks of the Kalkkoegel, the fantastic limestone mountains by Axamer-Lizum, the ski area featured in the Innsbruck Olympics.

Innsbruck, Austria & Notre Dame

This past year four of my old friends (and their spouses) came to Chardon to help celebrate my daughter Julia's wedding: Tom Heinen, Tim Forward, Chris Cotter, and Mike Gerrity. They joined Coughlin and Kleppel family members and friends for a joyous wedding celebration.

These dear friends and I studied together at the University of Notre Dame in 1966-67, and then in Salzburg and Innsbruck, Austria the following year. We have enough stories to blackmail everyone but Heinen.

The Notre Dame Innsbruck program was an incredible blessing for all of us. We still have many close friends from those years (36 guys in total studied in Innsbruck in '67-'68). I will write about them from time to time (and the blackmail stories are safe with me and will never see the light of day, especially the story about Tim Forward in Obergurgl--unless I am waterboarded).

Skiing in Colorado

About six weeks ago we visited our daughter Carolan in Frisco, Colorado, and skied with her at Copper Mountain. This was the first skiing I did on a large mountain since 1968, when I was a "student" in Innsbruck, Austria. I wondered if I could still ski and also wondered if the altitude would affect me. Luckily, I could indeed still ski, and wasn't too affected by the incredible altitude--the peaks at Copper Mountain are nearly 11,000 feet. The last time I was at this elevation was in May or June of 1968, when Tim Forward and I climbed the glacier on the Austrian Mountain called Zuckerhuettl ("Sugar Shack"). Tim and I climbed the mountain glacier on skis; the last hundred yards or so, we took off our skis and climbed by foot up the steep "horn" of this great mountain on the Austrian-Italian border in the Stubai Valley (Stubaital). Tim got terribly sunburned in this adventure. Luckily, he did wear sunglasses, so there was no eye damage.

During our 4-day visit to Colorado, we visited towns like Leadville, Breckenridge, Vail, and Boulder. I was impressed by all the wonderful public art in these places. Posted above is a photo of a sculpture of jackasses we encountered in Breckenridge. I will be on the right in this photo; the jackasses on the left.