As an individual afflicted with both a fascination for Eastern Europe and a passion for skiing, I’ll be the first to admit that the former has caused me untold woe in pursuit of the latter.
In the six years I’ve spent in territory that used to be called “behind the Iron Curtain,” I have slid, slipped, skidded, schlepped, sloshed, slogged and suffered while endeavoring to engage in my preferred winter sport. Only occasionally, though, have I actually skied.
I’ve endured food that long ago went over the hill, stayed in hotels with all the charm of a bus station, and slept on mattresses as lumpy as a mogul field.
From the Krkonose and Sumava Mountains in the Czech Republic, to the Tatra Mountains in Poland and Slovakia, and all the way to the Caucasus in Georgia, I’ve ridden rope tows, poma lifts, T-bars, ancient single chairlifts and aerial trams that transport perhaps 100 people per hour.
And at the bottom of these lifts I nearly always see hundreds of eager skiers, as often as not sporting skis with unfamiliar names like Suslov, Artis or Polar. And attached to the skis are almost as many leather boots and laces as plastic ones with buckles.
In short, skiing here is not unlike going back 25 or 30 years to my early days riding the fabled J-bar at Holiday Hills or the poma at Pikes Peak, both long-defunct ski areas near my hometown of Colorado Springs. And like the ski hills of my childhood, most areas in these parts are the kind of place where you can bring the kids with virtually no fear of losing them, because you can’t help but see them every 15 minutes or so. The slopes are as much sledding hill as ski run, and 10-year-olds are grand-old-men-and-women of the ski pistes, bombing downhill as if they owned the place.
I remember one time, returning to my home in Prague from a glorious week in Austria. As a thick fog descended on the highway and the clock pushed midnight, we stumbled on a small hotel in the Sumava Mountains. We stopped in, and after a few formalities were shown to one of the nicest rooms I’ve ever seen in this region.
Sure, it was furnished in what might be called “Socialist Basic,” but the beds held their shape, there was hot water, and the television even worked. And at $12.50 a night for two people, including use of the sauna and an all-day lift pass at the ski area across the road, it was a bargain by any standard.
Even when things are a good deal, though, you get what you pay for. Take the sauna. Yes it’s free–if you happen to be there on a Wednesday, the one day a week when they turn it on. On Saturday and Sunday, when people might actually want to use it, it sits as dark and cold as the winter night.
In the morning, the fog had lifted but we had trouble discerning any ski area across the road. On closer examination, though, we did see skiers descending a short hill, and there even appeared to be a lift of some sort.
Once there, we found about 30 people in line for a rope tow. At only two or three people per minute, we had to wait more than 10 minutes before arriving at the front of the line, where I noticed that everybody had a little stick attached to a rope with a hook at the end. They attached the hook to the rope, put the stick between their legs and were magically transported up the hill (and, it seemed, back in time about 30 years). At the top, they carefully wrapped the rope and stick arrangements around their waist for the trip downhill.
Of course, we didn’t have the equipment necessary to ascend the hill, but the woman standing behind us in line assured us it was available for a deposit of about $2. As it turns out, it wasn’t necessary, because although we had tickets for the ski area across the road from the hotel, it wasn’t this ski area.
En route from Kitzbuehel, where one ticket buys access to 64 lifts spread through about six towns, eight valleys and an unknown quantity of square miles, this came as something of a shock. But we accepted our fate gracefully and skied down into the drainage ditch at the side of the highway, in the direction the lift operator indicated we might find the other ski area.
Of course, not every Eastern European ski experience is similarly doomed. I’ve had unforgettable (in the positive sense) helicopter skiing in former Soviet Georgia, encountered challenging mogul fields in Poland, and found superb powder in Slovakia. And I hear that Bulgaria, Romania and even Kazakhstan have substantial mountains with reasonable facilities.
But for the most part, Eastern European ski areas suffer from abysmal planning, minimal slope maintenance and lack of modern lifts. In the Czech Republic’s Krkonose Mountains, for example, the resort of Spindleruv Mlyn now offers a number of newly renovated hotels and some decent restaurants–both virtually non-existent in years past. But the area’s 20 or so ski tows and lifts are virtually all separated by long slogs through town or up snow-covered roads, and most are accessible only with separate tickets.
Similarly, at Zakopane, Poland, I was lucky enough to have a reservation for the antiquated cable car that transports skiers, 15 or 20 at a time, to the top of Kasprowy Wierch. Otherwise, I would have had to wait for two hours or more to get on the overloaded lift.
Skidding? Sloshing? Slogging? Yes. Suffering? A little bit. But skiing? Absolutely not.
