IT’S ALL IN THE TIMING…
The British have waited patiently to ski in Switzerland of late, but in the Jungfrau ski area they are familiar with playing the long game – this is where the Ski Club of Great Britain and Sir Arnold Lunn invented downhill ski racing (and arguably ski lifts) a century ago…
WORDS COLIN NICHOLSON
PHOTO JUNGFRAU.CH
It was worth the wait. Early this season I joined some of the first British skiers and snowboarders to take advantage of the 15-minute ride in the swish new gondola from Grindelwald to the Eiger’s highest piste – a journey that previously took an hour by train.
One of Switzerland’s charms is that trains often serve as ski lifts – you can race against them as they trundle alongside the pistes – but for skiers itching for action that is too slow a ride.
You could get round the problem by sticking to Grindelwald’s local slopes, as I did on my first day. This part of the huge Jungfrau ski area has retained a quaint otherworldly feel. Skiing from the steep blues and reds at the top, I dropped below the treeline to criss-cross runs full of tobogganers under the Wetterhorn’s imposing sheer face, finding myself skiing through villages where farmyard smells mixed with woodsmoke.
This was a world away from the smart, airline-style ‘terminal’ where I began the next day’s adventures. The focus of a £400 million project, it is the base station for both the new lift taking you up to Männlichen mountain and also the new Eiger Express (and houses the vital Covid testing centre that we needed to get back home). For the record, everyone wore face coverings in gondolas, and I found FFP2 masks with a strap around the back of my head easiest, as I simply needed to pull them up over my nose each time I boarded a lift.
I’d worried about crowds, but even on the first weekend of the Christmas holidays, the new gondola wasn’t busy. I say new, but the Eiger Express opened in December 2020, shortly before the moment when, to the frustration of Brits, borders around the world closed.
The epic Eiger Express can carry 2,400 skiers an hour
PHOTOS JUNGFRAU.CH
If it is any consolation, locals had been waiting even longer, as the gondola arrived a very un-Swiss four years late. In an age where we blame Covid for everything, there have always been more humdrum obstacles – in this case a disgruntled employee of the lift company itself, Otto Kaufmann. Having spent 40 years checking the tickets of skiers, walkers and tourists en route to the Eiger, he objected to the new lift passing over his house.
Here I was skiing perfectly groomed slopes in the shadow of the Eiger, and swooshed past the restaurant run by Otto, who initially demanded £750,000 compensation, only backing down in 2018, long after environmentalists agreed to the new gondola. The lift can carry 2,400 skiers an hour (hence the near-empty cabins) with minimal impact as its 3S – or tri-cable – system makes it so stable in high winds it can soar high over the trees with the aid of just seven pylons over its 6.5km.
The Swiss kindly refer to this as the lift’s first season of ‘international opening’ in recognition of the importance of foreign visitors, which should not be underestimated. For this is also where the British effectively invented the ski lift. By booking up hotels in Mürren in winter, the Ski Club of Great Britain and Sir Arnold Lunn persuaded the Swiss to open railways for the 1909-10 season. So the first mechanised uphill transport for skiers was born (and the one still favoured by the likes of Otto).
The Jungfrau ski area has always been a favourite with Members, and we can thank the Club’s legendary Sir Arnold Lunn for its lifts!
As I approached the clifftop commune of Mürren at the far end of the ski area on my third day I spied the avalanche barriers built to allow the trains to run year-round. The charming, car-free village is the sort of isolated place where you can imagine a James Bond villain locating his lair. And indeed Mürren’s revolving Piz Gloria restaurant was chosen as the setting for On Her Majesty’s Secret Service in 1969, when fanciful ideas of the global spread of deadly viruses constituted light entertainment. Ironically, I was nearly barred entry as, while I had my NHS Covid vaccination certificate, I had forgotten my ID, which staff also check at every outlet.
Having inveigled my way in, I fled down a black run, recreating Bond’s escape on skis, the stuff of cinematic history. However, the British created real ski history in Mürren 100 years ago this month [January 1922] when Sir Arnold – who edited the Ski Club’s magazine for 55 years – staged the world’s first recorded Slalom race. In 1921, he had added Alpine skiing to the disciplines of Ski Jumping and Cross-country skiing in British competitions, but this was judged on style not speed, much like figure skating is now. Sir Arnold became convinced of the need for a Slalom event with timing the only arbiter.
“The object of a turn is to get round a given obstacle losing as little speed as possible. Therefore, a fast ugly turn is better than a slow pretty turn,” he wrote, arguing that a timed race would test a skier’s ability to turn securely and rapidly on steep Alpine ground – and fast, ugly turns were pretty much what I was doing, having missed a season’s skiing. So Sir Arnold arranged the first Slalom race, setting pairs of flags to test the main varieties of Alpine ski turns.
He and the Ski Club finally had the British rules for Downhill and Slalom officially approved in 1930, with the disciplines introduced to the Olympics in 1936, although Sir Arnold boycotted the Nazis’ opening ceremony (read more about this on page 90). We can only speculate as to what he would have made of China hosting this winter’s Games.
The quaint mountain village of Grindelwald
In any case, I had my own race to worry about, as I sped down the 15km route of the infamous Inferno run to catch the half-hourly train from Lauterbrunnen back to my hotel in Grindelwald.
The British have learnt to be patient and persistent when it comes to organising their ski holidays. And, as with so many things in life, timing is everything…
Factfile
The nearest airport is Zurich. Swiss (0345 601 0956) offers flights from London Heathrow, City and Gatwick, as well as Birmingham, Manchester and Edinburgh with ski carriage included. The Swiss Travel Pass Flex offers unlimited rail travel for three days, and costs £186.
Colin stayed at the Eiger Selfness spa hotel (+41 33 854 31 31), which offers doubles from CHF260 (£210) per night, B&B.
For more on skiing in the Jungfrau region click here or visit My Switzerland (call 00800 100 200 30).