Sunday
We had a very invigorating walk with Gabi and Mike this morning. When we met them at the lift pass office Gabi asked whether we had our free lift pass from the hotel, when we said we hadn't Colin was dispatched back to enquiry and sure enough he returned with free day passes for us which was brilliant and not only saved us 40 Euros but ensured that I didn't have to walk up any mountains-so I thought!
Gabi was born in St Anton and so is a mountain goat when out walking- very sure footed and very fast!
We went up two chair lifts and as we exited the second one (2315 metres) Mike pointed to a vertical slope with a zig zag path and said that's where we are walking up and then proceeded to point out the scree slopes and rock scrambles we would be doing over to the Valluga cable car (2659 metres the highest point in the resort) for the return journey down-oh goody!
The scenery was very dramatic, Mike pointed out lots of areas where Colin had gone during his off piste weeks with George as his guide. Looking at them now and comparing them to what he does in Morzine they are so gentle and tame but at the time,some 9 years ago, they were so adventurous and led him to being the skier he now is.
As we were scrambling up the last rock face to the telecabin the rain arrived, Gabi had already arrived and was waiting for us as I entered slightly wet and dripping, Colin commented that Gabi could sense the rain coming as she was a local and that is why she walked at such a fast pace, Mike said she always walks that fast and he is always having to chase her-sounds like Colin and I, I'm always lagging behind him!
When we first met Gabi; she looked at our feet and commented that as we only had walking sandals perhaps we shouldn't do the planned walk, Colin assured her that we had done many many miles of mountain walks in our sandals and we would be fine.
When we had said goodbye at the end of our walk Colin showed me that his sandal strap had broken just at the final scramble! So after lunch we went looking for replacement shoes for him and he now has a pair of very stylish Italian mountain shoes, the shop owner offered to put his sandals in their bin but I said they were much to smelly and would have to go in an outside bin which made him laugh!
Our afternoon walk was not quite as dry! We took the tele cabin up to the Galzig station (2105 metres) and then walked back into town. We had about half an hour in the dry at the start of the walk and 10 minutes at the end, the rest of the 1 and 3/4 hours was wet!
We had dried out enough to pop into a bar in town for a beer