Week 67: Skiing in Zell Am See

Week 67 started out with my first day at my new freelance gig and I am loving it. It is a bigger advertising agency located in Vienna and I am working on some pretty big-name clients.

Week 67 ended with us checking off another Austrian ski resort!

I said we would be back skiing after our successful trip last weekend. Yesterday, we went to Schmittenhöhe in Zell Am See. Two hours away from our house and right smack dab in the middle of the Austrian Alps.

View from the cable car.

The ski resort on the Schmittenhöhe is perched high above Lake Zell. It was a perfect blue sky day and we could see mountains for miles. The first ski lift brought us up 6,128 ft. From there, we followed the signs for the blue trails, which were great for us.

Eric about to ski down the mountain.

Thanks to Eric’s Garmin watch, we kept track of our activity during the 5 hours we were there.

We completed 13 runs, reached a ski speed of 34 mph, and burned about 2000 calories.

If we tally up all the runs we did, we skied for a total of 13.73 miles and descended 10,846.2 ft. Fun fact: That is about 1/3 of Mt. Everest!

Me in the cable car.

Around 12:45 pm, we took a break at one of the mountain huts named Breiteckalm. We were among about 100 other skiers and snowboarders taking a break and joined a table with a couple of friendly strangers from Bavaria. We talked, prosted, and enjoyed the beautiful weather together.

Have we mentioned how much we love it here?

I rarely show pictures of the food we eat. Most of the time food pictures don’t turn out very appetizing. But this was so delicious. It is Käsespätzle, or Nockerl, depending on what part of the country you are in. It is basically mac & cheese dumplings. If you visit us in Austria, this is a must-try as far as food recommendations go.

We stayed on the mountain until 4 pm. We took a cable car all the way back down to the valley because our safe blue trails turned into red and black trails.

Taken from the car on the drive back home.

At 6:30 pm, we arrived back in Gmunden and went to pick up the fur babies. We dropped them off at an animal hotel that morning. On days when our dog sitter can’t stay with the animals, this hotel is a nice option for us. Just 5 minutes away and the dogs get to be outside all day long if they want as their kennel has it‘s own doggie door. Denzel gets to be in a big open space with lots of windows, cubbies, and several other cats.

When we arrived, Denzel was just sitting in a little cubby in the corner. He was so cute in there. Him and the 7 or 8 other cats were just staring at each other. Charlie and Daisy, on the otherhand, seemed like they had been running and barking for 10 hours straight. As soon as we got home, they both hit the floor and fell asleep and today Daisy could barley let out a bark.

I hope they liked it there and felt comfortable because they are going back next weekend. Eric and I will be heading to Paris for Valentine’s day 💖🥐🇫🇷🥖

So here is the heads up that our week 68 recap video and blog post may come a day or two after Sunday.