Skiing (or more appropriately not skiing) in Sauerland

I am finally back from my escapades State side, and it is so nice to be back in my own home. While I had a great trip visiting friends and family, living out of a suitcase for three weeks starts to get a bit old.

I was lucky enough to come home to 3 sunny days right in a row, which really made the transition from sunny Denver, Colorado to Bonn, Germany a little easier. I also came home to snow on the ground which is unusual for Bonn. According to Jim's coworkers, this has been the coldest winter Europe has seen in a very long time.

Since we didn't know when we'd see snow again, we decided on Sunday to investigate some cross country skiing areas in Sauerland about 2 hours west of Bonn. Of course, to get me to agree to go, Jim told me it was only an hour from here (a bit sneaky of him).

The drive to the ski area in the morning was absolutely beautiful. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, and the sun made the snow covered trees and hills sparkle. The drive took us through some small towns which made it much more pleasant than driving up I-70 in Colorado.

We arrived in Schmallenberg around 12:00, and it looked like a perfect day to ski. We were pleasantly surprised to discover that the ski pass was only 5 euro. Unfortunately, it didn't take too long to find out why it was so cheap. The skate skiing area was a 2k track, crowded with inexperienced skiers. All of the other trails were for classic cross country skiing only. After about 4 times around the track, Jim and I were both ready to find a different place to ski. Jim had done some research on Nordic skiing in the area and thought there was another place not too far.

So we loaded up the car and continued on our quest to find a good skate skiing spot. We decided to go to Willigen. We didn't have an address to plug into the GPS for the ski area, but we figured that once we got to the town, we would see some signs. Unfortunately that wasn't the case. We finally decided to go to the tourist area to see if there was an address there. As it was Sunday, the tourist office was of course closed, but we were able to pick up some maps of the ski trails.

Even with the maps of the trails it wasn't very clear where the ski center was. We saw a sign for a Craft (skiing and cycling clothing brand) shop so decided to stop there and ask someone where the ski area was. After driving up a narrow, residential road, we found the shop which was part of some one's house. The door was wide open so we walked in but there was no one there. I'm not sure why the door was open especially because the shop had an open door right into their home so anyone could have walked in and walked off with a lot of expensive clothing and gear.

Back in the car again, we put the ski jump address into the GPS since one of the starting points looked like it was in that vicinity. After parking the car and hiking up a hill for 30 minutes, we were able to find the ski jump and what looked like some groomed trails, with hikers on them but no skiers. From the top of the hill at the ski jump we saw some skiers below on the trails so decided to get back in the car to drive around in that area.

Finally, after about 3 hours since the last ski area, we found the entrance to the ski trails. There was no center and apparently no cost to get on the trails. By this point, it was 4:00 and I had given up on skiing. I wanted to get on the road because we had heard traffic would be bad, and I was also concerned about the fact that it would be dark soon. My experience in Germany with hiking trails is that they aren't marked so figured the same would be true of skiing trails. Jim, however, was not dissuaded and wanted to check out the trails to see if it made sense to come back here.

The plan was to meet back at the car in 45 minutes. I decided that hanging out in the cold car wasn't appealing so went for a hike on some of the trails which weren't groomed for skiing. When I got back to the car 45 minutes later, Jim wasn't there. After about 40 more minutes, I started to get quite worried as it was getting dark and much colder. I figured that Jim's aversion to back tracking had caused him to get lost. When Jim finally arrived at the car, he was pretty shaken up. He had gotten lost and somehow had found the ski jump. He figured his only option was to take off his skis and walk down the jump. That proved to be more difficult than he anticipated in his ski boots on an icy, slick staircase. After falling about 100 feet down the jump, and possibly ruining his skis, he finally got back to the car. At that point, he was more than ready to hang up his skies for the season. We'll see how long that lasts. I'm not convinced.