The winter season of 2020 - 2021 comes to an end soon and I think that's a good moment to share something about the sustainable wintersports I explored this season together with Tom. What are sustainable wintersports? And how did we experience our adventures? I made a video with impressions of different trips and wrote a blog about some challenges and experiences we've had.
Before moving to Switzerland I always went on wintersports for alpine skiing with friends or family. We just booked an apartment or chalet, arranged a ski ticket for the week and took the car or train to the Alps. That has always been and is still a great concept to recharge the battery. Although I knew there is much more to explore and there are more sustainable sport possibilities, I did not plan many alternative winter trips till now.
Sustainable wintersports
As I just said, alpine skiing is great but if it comes to sustainability, there are other possibilities with less environmental impact. For example winter hiking, snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, tour skiing and combinations of these activities. The Covid-19 winter was my first winter in Switzerland and actually a good winter to start exploring sustainable winter sports. Basically you use fewer (lift) facilities with these sports, and so you can choose to avoid places where many people get together. Furthermore, you use our own muscle power to get up the mountain and therefore the sustainable mountain sports are more active and good to keep you fit.
Cross-country skiing
It might be clear that I was very much looking forward to explore different sustainable wintersports in Switzerland. Although Tom really likes alpine skiing and he very much wants to improve his skills, he was also enthusiastic to try cross-country skiing with me. Before we started, we looked into the possibilities and found out that basically we had two options: the classic style and the free or skating style. With the classic style you mostly follow the parallel grooves in the prepared trails. The skating style has a bit more variation and it's movement is quite comparable with ice-skating. We thought the skating style would suit us better so we arranged our skating equipment (ski's, shoes, and poles), we checked some YouTube video's with techniques and we tried it out as soon as the first trail was prepared. While I had quite some difficulties to find a rhythm the first times, Tom was actually going forward very well.
Classic style (left) and free or skating style (right)
A setback also opened new doors
Unfortunately around Christmas Tom fell and dislocated his shoulder. That forced him to undergo a surgery and he had to adjust his sport ambitions for this winter. Although this was not quite the best start of the winter, we searched for other possibilities to enjoy the winter landscape together. Skiing was not an option for Tom but still he could walk with one hiking pole. As long as I carried the backpack with the things we needed for the trip, we could actually walk any winter trail. Between Tom's accident and the surgery, we even had our introduction into snowshoeing. If you ever want to try out snowshoeing and you want to invest in these snowshoes, you will find a great variety in types. Long, short, wide, narrow, plastic, aluminium, with or without climbing support and then I haven't talked about the different types of bindings yet. The idea is that there is a snowshoe for every kind of winter landscape since the optimal shape and flexibility differs a lot between the different landscapes. At the end we just wanted to explore a variety of landscapes so we tried to find some kind of all-round snowshoe. The first pair we tried didn't walk comfortable at all. Our feet hurt and we often stood with one shoe on the other. But we gave it another try with a new pair of shoes and that was much better and comfortable.
Snowshoe testing at Flumserberg
The first snowshoe trips surprised us very much in a positive way. Together with our friend Maarten we had a cold but great hike in our own backyard and between Christmas and New Year we went for three days to Oberiberg where we did different hikes from a little spa-hotel in the valley. With snowshoes you are able to walk through a think layer of snow and that makes it possible to walk through quiet and remote winter landscapes. It might not bring the action and adrenaline from skiing but still it is a great adventure and a good way to free you mind.
Tom's shoulder surgery and the recovery
At the end of January it was time for Tom to undergo the shoulder surgery. His shoulder was successfully operated, and after some months of physiotherapy and recovery he should be able to do everything again. At the moment I am writing this blog, he is 2,5 months further and it looks like he is recovering very well! Since a few weeks he is already back on the road with the racing bike and he his carefully making plans for the summer. To give an impression of what happened, I added some photo's of the shoulder surgery and the way Tom looked like after the surgery.
The shoulder surgery (slideshow)
The first week after Tom's surgery he had to stay home completely but after that week he could go out again for little walks and after three weeks we did already a short winter hike. Because his shoulder was to fragile to take any risk, we decided not to take the snowshoes anymore but to walk over hiking and winter trails. Maybe it was a bit forced by the situation but we both became very exited about the hiking possibilities in winter time. For me, the best hike was the winter hike through the valley of Unterengadin. In two days we walked from Susch to Ardez and from Ardez further to Scuol through the small and sustainable "Bergsteiger Dörfer" and the peaceful area.
Cross-country adventures continued
During the last months of the winter season, of course I still went cross-country skiing myself. Because the beginning was quite struggling for me, I decided to participated in a course to learn the different techniques. Learning the basic skills gave me a lot of confidence and motivation to continue training and explore the different trails in the area. In March I was even able to do the individual edition of the Engadin Skimarathon :). That what quite a tough trip but it was beautiful and worth it (link to the Engadin video)!
New challenges for next year
The 2020 - 2021 season is almost over but I hope this blog and the video inspired you to try something new and more sustainable next year. By then I hope to discover one more sustainable sport myself: tour skiing. But I am also very much willing to help you planning your sustainable winter trip.
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