Rather than a big ol’ blog post today, I just wanted to let all you blogsters know that the three of us in the WildSnow Dawson family are headed over to Europe again this winter. We’ll be leaving middle of March for a three week trip. Austria, Germany and Switzerland are the destinations. Our plan is to start with a few days touring in the Kitzbuhel region to get our legs under us, then we’ll head over to Switzerland and the Bernese Oberland for some high Alps action, weather permitting.
Along with all that, we’ll be doing a cultural tour in Baveria, where my wife has roots (some current, some just one generation back). That’ll make for some fun and interesting blogging from a slightly different perspective.
I figured posting this now would be a good idea, because I’m looking for info about what it’s like to self-guide up in the Jungfrau & Eiger area. If any of you readers have been able to go over there and pull that off, I’d love to hear from you. I’m specifically wondering about high altitude ski tours with a bit of mellow glacier travel. We’d like to do at least one classic and famous tour with perhaps two nights in huts, but we’re also looking for day tours we can get to out of the village of Frutigen. If anyone lives in that area and would like to show us around, we’d consider that as well. (Perhaps a guide that wants PR on WildSnow.com?) Another thing I was thinking of tackling was a climb of the Eiger by the “easy” route. So if anyone has done that I’d love to hear from you.
This is less of an “industry” trip than my last, but we’ll still be blogging the whole thing and doing some gear tie-ins such as visiting the Fritschi binding facility, visiting Dynafit in Munich, and of course hanging out with our Dynafit friends near Kitzbuhel. That way I can spy on Dynafit and hopefully sneak some info about new products they’re developing.
It’s quite a reach for us to haul the whole clan over there, especially with the exchange rates. But we’ve got a budget travel plan figured out — and like Warren says, if we don’t do it this year, we’ll be one year older when we do.
WildSnow.com publisher emeritus and founder Lou (Louis Dawson) has a 50+ years career in climbing, backcountry skiing and ski mountaineering. He was the first person in history to ski down all 54 Colorado 14,000-foot peaks, has authored numerous books about about backcountry skiing, and has skied from the summit of Denali in Alaska, North America’s highest mountain.
