With our ski season cut short, we all have plenty of time to read this month’s news. Please make sure to take note of Armand’s message, as he has news of upcoming events that are postponed or cancelled. Everyone please try to stay healthy and enjoy the slow pace of life as it is right now, in this unusual world situation.
President’s Message, by Armand Gutierrez
2020 FWSA International Ski Trip to Davos, by Judy Bracken
by Armand Gutierrez
The month of March will be remembered for a variety of events that have affected people on a grand scale. Primarily, the spread of the corona virus that is now keeping us in our homes in order to halt the spread of the disease and curtailing our daily activities. Then, much to our dismay, all of the ski resorts were closed and thus shortening our ski season. All of the FWSA participants, including four from NSC that went on the Davos/Portugal trip, were delayed by one day on returning home. We were fortunate for had it been delayed one day longer then it would have been much more difficult for us to return to US soil.
During the year we have regular Board Meetings in order to run the club for the season. Normally the meetings are held on a monthly basis, but sometimes a month, or two, will be skipped if there are no pressing issues. Our March board meeting was held as a videoconference, a first for NSC. I’ve always been a proponent for face-to-face board meetings and a videoconference was the next best thing. The one thing we did miss was going out to lunch after the meeting.
April is here and that generally means the end of another great ski season. However, our ski season actually ended mid-March. At our March board meeting the decision was made, based on the shelter-in-place mandate, to postpone upcoming events that includes our Annual June Picnic, another Tea Dance (last year’s was popular), and a Thai Cooking Demonstration. As we progress through the remainder of the year we will try and hold these postponed events.
2020 FWSA Ski Week to Davos, Switzerland
Judy Bracken, Elaine Graves, Roland Lee, and I had a great skiing experience in Davos: plenty of fresh powder, hardly any lift lines, and tasty Swiss cuisine on the slopes. The funicular (pictured left) was adjacent to our hotel, along with the Parsenn Sports shop where we rented skis. The return trip from Portugal was a bit of a nightmare for Judy and I, and others on the trip. Our Portugal flight to Zurich was cancelled and that caused us to miss our Zurich-to-SFO flight. Kudos to Debbie Stewart, our FWSA trip director, for spending hours on the phone with the US Embassy, Swiss Air, and the travel agency for procuring flights for our return home, albeit a day late. To complicate matters due to the impending corona virus travel restrictions, Swiss Air was the only airline with flights from Zurich to the US: Boston and Newark (NJ). We were fortunate to return to the US prior to travel restrictions and corona virus screening were implemented. See Judy’s article for her perspective on her first FWSA international trip.
Board Nominations & Elections
Well, it’s that time again for holding our board nominations and elections for the 2020-2021 season, and an email for making your nominations for the board has already been posted.As you know,volunteers run this club, and without them this club would cease to exist, and it’s been in existence for 60 years! You are encouraged to take this opportunity to nominate an individual for one, or more, of the board positions. All individuals that accept the nomination(s) will go through an election process in May, and final results will be announced in the June Newsletter. Normally the results would be announced at the annual June picnic, but due to current shelter-in-place requirements the June picnic is postponed. Many of you have served on the board in the past, and your efforts were greatly appreciated and perhaps you would like to join the board again. For those that have never served then perhaps now is the time to consider a board position and provide new ideas and useful experiences.
2021 NSC Ski Week to Breckenridge, CO
Next year’s ski week will be at Breckenridge, CO from 23-30 January, 2021. Breckenridge is part of Vail Resorts so you can pick up an Epic Pass for the next season. Once again, Sports America will be offering the Epic Pass promotion-lodging rebate of $30 for an Epic Local Pass and $50 for a Full Epic Pass.
For 2020-21 Breckenridgewill be on the Epic Pass, and is also good for Northstar, Heavenly Valley, and Kirkwood. Here is what you need to know about the Ikon and Epic Passes for the Breckenridge trip:
If you have any questions about either of the passes then drop me a line at president@niseiskiclub.org.
by Judy Bracken
We were so excited to start out on our first European ski trip! Elaine, Armand and I had no trouble on our smooth overnight flight from SFO to Zürich. Roland had arrived earlier to visit his cousin. There was a jolly meeting with the other 80 skiers arriving from all sorts of places. Somehow our FWSA trip director, Debbie Stewart, managed to coordinate these large groups. We filled up our two buses and continued our journey for about three hours, arriving in Davos in time for dinner and long awaited sleep!
The five-star Hotel Seehof had spacious rooms and was close to the resorts. Included was a scrumptious breakfast and dinner almost every day, with a welcoming and friendly staff. Dinner dishes each night were creatively cooked and served, including famous Swiss made cheeses and sauces, served with fish or meat. After skiing we had time to put on our bathrobes and visit the downstairs spa, complete with a whirlpool, sauna and steam rooms. We learned quickly that the European way is to wear nothing while in the saunas!
Skiing at Davos was spectacular, especially the views. From our hotel, it was just a few steps away to get on the steep funicular to the midway point of Parsenn, the largest and most popular of the six ski resorts surrounding the town of Davos. Skiing here was much different than our home resorts. We took very steep trams or funiculars to get up to the big bowls and most ski runs. Then multiple forms of transport take you further up the mountain, including t-bars, chairlifts, gondolas, trains, and more trams. Descending to the bottom was often a long, winding road with small cabins dotted about. Nothing was crowded, and free buses take you from one resort to another.
If there was fresh snow, skiing off piste was really good, but otherwise the groomed runs were not very interesting. There are few trees up at the high slopes, and it’s white everywhere with breathtaking views of Matterhorn type peaks as far as the eye could see (on the two sunny days of the week). Other days were blustery with some white out conditions. Ski runs are numbered, not named, and the lollipop markers help you find your way down. Everyone takes long lunches in private huts placed all about the mountains. You are waited upon, and can order anything from goulash to apple strudel. The lift passes were half as much as US, although food and everything else was quite pricey. We were told that there had been no snow for some time, and we were lucky to get some fresh powder!
Our NSC group did not go on the optional day trip to Lucerne, but we enjoyed the evening sleigh ride and fondue dinner. We boarded six to each horse drawn sleigh, snuggled under blankets, then over the river and through the woods we went. The snow was falling gently in the dark night, and listening to the sleigh bells ringing as we meandered up a canyon, passing chalets and weathered barns seemed like a fairytale. We arrived at a cozy house where we enjoyed a meal of salad, traditional Swiss fondues and wine.
This was my first European ski trip, and it was fun to be with a group of likeminded, fun loving folks from all over the western US. It seemed we had a party every other night, and despite the jet lag all week, most of us managed to eat, drink, ski and be merry most of the time! We had no idea this would be our last ski of the season…
For the second week, 48 of us continued on to Portugal, where the weather was gorgeous every single day. We started hearing more about the coronavirus spread heating up. Even so, we enjoyed Lisbon and our humorous tour guide Valter, learning so much about Portuguese history and culture. One of our best meals of the trip was a six-course lunch at Museu da Cerveja (museum of beer). Then there were delicious pastries, and shopping galore. On the drive to Porto we stopped at Obidos, a tiny village surrounded by castle walls, then to Nazare, home of beaches with the biggest surf in the world. We were treated to an amazing seafood lunch, after which we soon arrived in Porto.
We again had a wonderful day tour of Porto, complete with a substantial Portuguese lunch and a port wine tasting. On our free day some people walked or biked along the River Douro or saw more city sights. It seemed the Portuguese people bent over backwards to please their visitors.
At the same time, news of the coronavirus was getting serious. Flights were being cancelled and European travelers were banned from coming to the US. Most of us had to alter our flight plans to get home. It was the end of our eventful trip, and we were grateful once we boarded our planes and landed on our home turf at last.
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