PUTTING ON THE MORITZ: Skiing In Davos
Tyson Buldoc
Derek Taylor |
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What can I say about St. Moritz that the front desk at the hotel didn’t already: We don’t belong here. Tall, proud, well-manicured with a shorn head, and proper, he looks down at the address on the crumpled and folded sheet of paper in my hands and says simply, “This place is not in St. Moritz. You know that, right?”
In other words, ‘take your greasy hat-head and putrid poly-pro and get back on the train you rode in on. Or better yet, there’s a bus up the street that will get you out faster. If you had a molecule of the class it takes to roll in St. Moritz, you would pay the 25 francs for a cab to Samedan where your hostel room awaits, but this much I know: You don’t and you won’t, so beat it!’
This, of course, he did not say. Or even subtly insinuate, as the pompous are so good at. He was polite and helpful and got us heading in the right direction, which is about 12 km down the road to a village on the outskirts. But as we walk past not one, but two brand new Rolls-Royce Phantoms parked out front, and up past the Versace, Louis Vuitton, and countless other store fronts of brands whose high price is more a tip to opulence than function, it is clear that we are strangers in a strange place. We thought of this place as the Aspen of Switzerland, but now we get the feeling that St. Moritz could buy Fat City and sell off its celebrities as extras.
We came from Davos, a place of down-to-Earth wealth, where we were welcomed as stars and provided with a flat just off the bus route and steps from one of five ski systems that ring the valley. And we slayed like champions. We spent most of our time at Parsenn, and vast system of Funiculars, trams and high-speed chairs that service a spider web of ridges. Shot hikes and traverses put us on top of couloirs and spines, all covered in powder.
Yes, it was thin, and we had to tip toe at times and collected our share of core shots. But our stay there consisted of one day of flat-light skiing in the trees of Jacobshorn, and two of blue-bird ridge hunting in Parsenn.
We had our share of pitfalls, for sure. Our first day at Parsenn, Corey Tiblas, our filmer, missed the bus and he and Tyson Bolduc splintered off to shoot on their own. Halfway through the next day I broke the heal piece on my binding. After trying three shops for a replacement, I decided to give up and head to the Plaza for a beer on the deck.
Sitting there soaking in the last weekend of Davos, I got a glimpse into the future of skiing. A charity race featured some of Switzerland’s best racers, including Didier Cuche. But the most impressive part was watching the young racers, probably as young as six, with bibs on and slalom skis, hiking the halfpipe between runs. They weren’t being discouraged, weren’t being raised as racers or freestylers, but just as skiers. And on a beautiful spring day with the sun shining down on Davos Platz, I couldn’t think of anything better to be.
So now we are here in Samedan, in this quaint village outside St. Moritz. Our accommodation at the B and B is hardly the Hotel Crystal, but the beds are comfortable, the people friendly, and the tight, old-country feel of the streets is much more our style than the cosmopolitan vibe of downtown, anyway. Tomorrow we will ski Corvatsch. Tonight, we are right where we belong.
For a gallery of images from this story go HERE
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