Since I fly (and more so since I live in the North of Germany, even farther from the Alps and since operating an own plane here) I keep fantasizing that every winter, I do about 4-5 trips to some skiing destination with the airplane that just wouldn’t be possible by car. However, these trips rarely materialized so far. Various factors lead do that, probably actually dominated by the extended Covid lockdowns, but also the typical mismatch of flying conditions and leisure time at the weekends that are often busy with other life things.
However, with the extremely stable weather over the past two weeks or so and the original plans for the past weekend cancelled, I decided pretty last minute on Friday evening that I would fly to Zell am See LOWZ to see some snow and do some ski runs. I still find LOWZ the ideal ski destination by aircraft due to the great logistics. The lift (Areitbahn) is a 10-15 minute walk from the airfield. I actually considered trying LOIJ St Johann this time, but they are PPR and didn’t have parking space available. i suppose the famous Courchevel is even a bit more spectacular because you don’t even need to bother with a lift – but it’s a bit harder to organize with the site rating etc – something on my bucket list for the future.
While it could be done as a same day trip, I find two long flights + a day of skiing a bit too much to still be entertaining. I would do it with a second pilot so that either inbound or outbound I could rest. In this case, I decided to fly there in a leisurely mode on Saturday. There was a decent head wind enroute anyway and I felt by flying a low power setting, I could somewhat offset the current (and to be expected) fuel prices. So the Saturday flight ended up taking 4 hours for the 421 NM from EDHF to LOWZ.
Having organized ski pass and rental skis on Saturday late afternoon, I was ready to be on the slopes early on Sunday morning for a more or less full ski day. I did the last run at 14:30, then returned the skis to the shop, walked to the airfield and flew home with a tail wind in a bit less than 3 hours.
I always love the moment when the Alps appear on the horizon and you realize these are not clouds, these are snowy mountain tops. On the photo, I’m already a little closer, with the Chiemsee to the left.
Quite majestic views…
This should be the Wilder Kaiser…
Short Video Clip:
Nice! LOWZ Is One of the airports I went often during training and on my first solo, so I might be biased. Nice people and oh so wonderful scenery :)
Very cool! As my girlfriend lives too close to some famous ski areas, I didn’t succeed to fly to a ski destination yet. At least I managed to ski in the morning and take a scenic flight in the afternoon this year. 
Such trips like these would be even more amazing if Europe had a bit more NVFR-friendly airports, so you could arrive early upon ski opening or return in the evening and even refuel somewhere on the way back. (Wouldn’t fly through mountainous areas at night though, but at least arrive or depart during daylight).
Nice
LOWZ is a great airport. They even had the EuroGA leaflets there, for a short while We got loads of signups through that, but short of somebody going there and leaving some…
How would you rate Zell am See for skiing? I went there in 2016 but it was well above my “pay grade” back then
Frans wrote:
Such trips like these would be even more amazing if Europe had a bit more NVFR-friendly airports, so you could arrive early upon ski opening or return in the evening and even refuel somewhere on the way back. (Wouldn’t fly through mountainous areas at night though, but at least arrive or depart during daylight).
I would say that for enroute, there are quite some options to stop-over and fuel at night, if necessary. In the middle of Germany, e.g. my former homebase EDLP is a very convenient 24h/365 days stop-over.
The problem at the home bases is real. For our airfield, it’s actually quite maddening: Runway lighting is installed, but the airfield closes at sunset – any time after that is PPR. However, when I do that (I attempted it this weekend actually!) the “Flugleiter” of the day (who is doing this on a volunteer basis and who has been sitting there since 8:30 in the morning) is usually reluctant and you end up with something like this: “Sure, if you are a few minutes later, I will stay here, but try to be on time!”. I wish for the natural ability to come and leave at any time as I wish. We would only need pilot-controlled lighting for that and wait for the removal of the mandatory Flugleiter to be in place (later this year). But there is a lot of reluctance to really even look at this at our airfield.
Leaving LOWZ late in the evening is fine IMO: It only takes a few minutes out of the valleys and you will be over flat lands again (assuming you’re traveling north).
Peter wrote:
How would you rate Zell am See for skiing? I went there in 2016 but it was well above my “pay grade” back then
I’m in the process of turning my girlfriend into a skier. We first went to Rauris (by car), which is a few valleys further east. She had a good first experience there with a great instructor. The second year, we flew to Zell am See and her overall experience wasn’t so great. I think it had more to do with the instructor than the slopes. Having said that, I find some of the blue runs at Schmittenhöhe quite steep for blue. They are great for me: I’m an intermediate skier and I take great joy in doing some steeper blue runs and prefer those over “fighting” my way down red, let alone black ones.
I haven’t been for a while, but if you decide to go to Zell am See and are looking for wide blue runs, then consider the Kaprun area. That is included in the ski pass, however it’s not in walking distance from the airfield, so you would need to take a ski bus or taxi for a 10-15 minute ride to the Kaprun/Kitzsteinhorn area.
Great trip and pics! I can see we’re gathering more and more experience here with these skiing trips so we may have a proper fly2ski next year
Thanks for the report, reminding me to head to LOWZ again soon!
Thanks Patrick
High-value trip and an excellent video
