Trip Report "Fly to Ski": Zell am See

I had been wanting to combine flying and skiing for quite some time now. The last days of 2016 finally gave me that opportunity I had been waiting for: An amazing high pressure area “Yörn” (we give them names in Germany) took care of mostly great flying weather (minus the moist ground layer that entailed some fog and freezing fog) and a couple of days off work at the turn of the year gave me ample time and flexibility to sit out sudden weather changes for the return trip, if need be. A great provision for get-home-itis!

The obvious choice was Zell am See (LOWZ). I haven’t come across an equally ideal place for this: It’s rather “easy” to fly into from the north – i.e. the time actually spent navigating the valleys is shortish, while still sporting some amazing scenery and views. The airfield elevation is less of a factor than with e.g. the altiports of France. The runway is located literally 10 walking minutes from the first lift (Areitbahn I).

A day before the trip, I asked around on Facebook if any of my friends wanted to join – and sure enough, there were some undecided, adventurous people who expressed interest and one who actually came along.

The “advertisement” I created to seek passengers.

We decided to make this a three day trip – flying there on Thursday, a full day of skiing on Friday, and flying out on Saturday – with a potential bonus afternoon on the slopes on Thursday if we arrived early enough.

On Thursday early morning, EDLP Paderborn/Lippstadt reported CAVOK, so we anticipated to be skiing by noon. In order to facilitate that, I had reserved the best performing aircraft from the club fleet – one of their Cessna 182 TR. On that aircraft, the flight time was calculated with just a bit over 2 hours. We loaded the plane (I suppose it would be possible to fit the skis into the 182, but we chose to rent the hardware on site) and fueled up. Another benefit of the 182 is the generous fuel capacity and useful load: With all four tanks filled up, we’d be saving us the hassle of refueling in Zell am See for the return trip.

We were not so lucky, however: I had to abort the take-off roll when we experienced very heavy vibrations as soon as we accelerated above some 15-20 knots. Definitely more than what I’d describe as shimmy: The iPad came off from its knee-board case and fell on the cabin floor… It actually felt like a burst tyre, but a short visual inspection after coming to a halt indicated that both main wheels were fine and in fact we taxied off the runway and back to the hangar slowly and without further problems. When we inspected the aircraft from outside, we noted a distinct smell from the brakes (though the brakes were functioning okay and were not stuck or anything) and we also realized that the nose wheel was sitting quite low (i.e. the visible part of the oleo was too small). I have to say I’m a bit annoyed that I didn’t realize this during pre-flight or when sitting in the aircraft. After all, the 182 has a pretty distinct “nose high” attitude when sitting on the ground which quite notably affects forward visibility when taxiing. I need to fly this aircraft more often than I currently do for this effect to be obvious to me. This aircraft hadn’t been moved since the beginning of November according to the log book. As the club mechanic was just off for the day and we were anxious to get going, we quickly decided to switch aircraft. Definitely a benefit of a club with a sizable fleet… Although the weather was great and many people were out flying, we were able to re-arrange bookings within a few minutes to make a C172 available – it’s the one I flew to Serbia and Croatia in 2014 and to the impromptu Euroga fly-in to Lausanne in 2015. The time loss due to unloading, reloading, pre-flighting and fueling up another airplane was considerable, though. Add to that the lower speed of the C172 and we saw our skiing afternoon gone. And if that wasn’t enough, the C172 wouldn’t want to start up without external power. Winter problems.

Eventually we were good to go and now expected to reach LOWZ just towards the end of the day with sufficient day light to fly in the mountains. Any further delays (such as unexpected head winds or any diversion, e.g. to circumvent airspace) would have likely forced us to fly to Salzburg only and see from there.

(from Flight Radar 24)

The actual flight was smooth, however. We cruised at flight level 85 to allow us to overfly several CTRs without worrying about clearances and also to be on the save side with respect to any emergency when overflying some fields of low cloud and fog. We practically flew a straight line (as straight as it gets without a directional auto pilot) across Munich Class C (lots of heavy traffic to be spotted, good fun for my passenger) and into the mountains.

Nuremberg Old Town with the airport in the background

Chiemsee and the Alps

From the airfield, we took a taxi to our hotel. We booked the hotel only 24 hours before and we got a pretty good deal considering the holiday week, paying 50 EUR per person per night for an uninspiring, but fair * * * hotel on the far side of the lake in Thumersbach – with great views of Zell am See and the Schmittenhöhe ski resort. From there, the local bus/ski bus would take us within less than 15 minutes to the center of Zell am See, with rental shops and ski lifts. In fact, we later figured out that this bus (usage included in the ski pass) actually stops quite close to the airfield, too.

As you can see from the pictures, there is some, but not much natural snow. The slope conditions with artificial snow were comparatively great, though. For sure there were some icy patches, but not nearly as bad as I had feared and we had a lovely, sunny day of skiing with only blue skies! My favorite restaurant here is the Hochzeller Alm: Nice, personal service at the table and well-prepared local dishes. I’m not a fan of the big self-service style restaurants in ski resorts. I have to say, Schmittenhöhe is good for a day or so but for any extended stay, it makes sense to drive up to Kaprun/Kitzsteinhorn for more variety. In the evening, we went into town for dinner and some drinks and sure enough, we met some locals in a bar and one of them was a Citation pilot who overheard us talking about flying and who used to instruct PPL at the local flying school.

The next day greeted us with much less favorable WX conditions than expected. The high pressure was still prevailing, however much less pronounced. Worse weather with clouds and precipitation was coming in from the north (with X conditions all over Northern Germany). Additionally, extensive areas of Southern Germany were covered by low cloud and isolated freezing fog.

I discussed this with my passenger to see if he was comfortable overflying such areas. We decided to go. We’d fly “high” again and also keep a bit further east, where conditions were forecast to be a bit better.

(from Flightradar 24)

We spent a long time clearing the Cessna from ice (unfortunately, no hangar space had been available). It was nice and sunny in Zell am See on Saturday, still, but the sun just wouldn’t melt the ice off the aircraft surfaces… I had brought plenty of car de-ice fluid and a brush, and we went to work… I wasn’t impressed by the fluid, though, it seemed to not help that much.

During that time, and also in-flight, I constantly updated myself on the WX situation (using the autorouter Telegram bot) enroute but particulary at the destination EDLP – which had been clear earlier but deteriorated a bit during flight. From a weather point of view, this was definitely one of my more exciting flights. It was also quite beautiful and peaceful to look at. During this flight, my alternates that I played through in my head constantly changed. At first, I always kept in mind that returning to Salzburg or flying towards Czech Republic (which we could confirm visually was clear) were options. Later, we had Nuremberg enroute, which was clear, too. Had we learned that EDLP had gone worse by the time we were around Nuremberg, we would have landed there. Next options were places further east, such as Erfurt. Eventually, we closed in on EDLP with EDVK Kassel as an alternate. We had confirmed earlier with Langen Information that Kassel was in fact open (after all, this was New Year’s Eve). Interestingly, when I requested an updated METAR for EDVK some time later, Langen Information said that “now we can’t reach anyone anymore. Seems like they’ve gone home celebrating!”. So EDVK wasn’t an option anymore. At this point, diversion options were now Dortmund and Cologne, which would have required an extended flight into night. That would have been okay: I had completely refueled in LOWZ, so we had a comfortable contingency of some 3 hours. Dortmund and Cologne are actually closer to my home, the only hassle would have been exchanging aircraft and car (parked at EDLP) later on.

Typical view to the west on this flight…

…and to the east.

Eventually, conditions at EDLP remained stable and actually improved over time. When we arrived, we had broken cloud at 2200 and visibility 9999. We parked the aircraft, unloaded and finished the paperwork. After this, it was just another three hours of driving to my home town to meet with some old friends for New Year’s Eve dinner – almost on time.

Happy New Year, Euroga!