The first of the two half term weeks 8th – 15th February was certainly slightly busier than the preceding weeks, but it didn’t seem to be the numbers we were expecting.
There was much chatter amongst leaders and instructors that perhaps the second week, 15th – 22nd February would be the perfect storm when all the U.K., Dutch, German and Swiss families arrived at once? Except they didn’t seem to. It was certainly busier, but not the madding crowds we were expecting.
Maybe the incredibly efficient V-Bahn distributed people around the mountain much more efficiently.
Perhaps the greater number of pistes also helped to spread people over larger areas and possibly the newish restaurants at Eigernordwand and Brandegg fed numbers far more efficiently.
I will read the official stats with interest but if the numbers were as expected you can only applaud how the infrastructure and staff dealt with them.
Apart from an entirely reasonable ten minute queue at the bottom of Mannlichen Gondola
first thing, there were never any queues longer than a few minutes. Lunch wasn’t the anticipated problem either, we always managed to find room, a particular favourite was Grund Railway station restaurant where the food is excellent, reasonably priced and tables always available. Eat your heart out France, Wengen is most definitely the place to be for half term.
PS. Let’s keep this as our secret, please don’t tell the other leaders, I would love the same slot next year!
Nature gave abundantly, but also took away to a lesser extent. We were blessed with great snow depth before the fortnight began and a decent dump midway through topped the levels up nicely. Some pistes that hadn’t been open as much in recent years were not only open, but sublime. Red 21, the Ladies world Cup downhill run was open, as was the forest run to Brandegg and even Gummi Nord opened latterly as an itinerary run for the first time in years.
The biggest treat for me though, was Stepfi, that glorious run at First that winds its way down through the trees with the Wetterhorn as a backdrop and ends at the restaurant of the same name (why are so many mountains named after restaurants?) for that late lunch or well-earned après. Natures slight negative was that we appeared to have a few more flat light days than normal but the aforementioned additional tree lined pistes, particularly Ladies Downhill, meant that this didn’t detract from a great fortnight.
