SNOW AND SMILES

PART 1

MAKING TRACKS

What do you do in one of the world’s major skiing landscapes if you can’t ski? Carey Davies heads to Innsbruck and finds the answer in the form of snowshoeing…

WE SET OFF ALONG A TRACK into a calm, snow-muffled Alpine forest. Huge creamy clots of snow stick to the branches of the Swiss pine trees, and the forest floor is covered in deep powdery drifts. Everything has a sort of hushed calm, and the occasional bird call or the trickle of water in a stream are highlighted with crystalline clarity. We gain height through the forest, and gaps in the trees begin opening up, revealing astonishing views of a valley flanked by walls of enormous white mountains, their skirts covered with snow-flecked forests, all basking under a blue sky brushed with chalky hints of high-altitude cloud.

This isn’t a long or ambitious walk, but as my first time venturing into the Alps in winter it’s something of a revelation to me. That might seem like something of an admission for an outdoor devotee to make, but this is my excuse: I don’t ski. My family didn’t ‘do’ skiing holidays, and as an adult I have always been drawn to mountains for different reasons. I generally know how to wield a backpacking tent, a climbing rack or an ice axe, but what to do with waxed fibreglass planks remains a mystery to me. I have never worn salopettes, stayed in a chalet or had a ‘cheeky après ski’; and when people talk about ‘skinning up’, well, let’s just say it has different connotations. So what would I do in