Adelboden: Sunshine, Spring Conditions & a Cute Ski Instructor

Spring skiing in January -- with Switzerland's Best-Looking Ski Instructor

The first ski schools in Switzerland were established in Mürren and Wengen, both in Switzerland's Jungfrau region. More quickly followed, and the Swiss Ski School Federation was established 75 years ago. Coincidentally or not, Switzerland Tourism launched a promotion this year to select the best-looking ski instructor in the country. Every member ski school nominated a candidate, and the public was invited to E-vote.

I am currently with a small group of writers, in Adelboden, being shown around by a couple of instructors. While we are the mountain, the younger of the two, 27-year-old Andreas Belser, got a phone call informing him that he had been voted the best-looking ski pro in the land. Word got out quickly, and his phone kept ringing -- a radio station from here, a newspaper from there, it was a small-scale, on-mountain media circus. We weren't regular clients, so he took the calls -- giving quick interviews. It was kind of fun.

It turns out that Andreas I have a few things on common. My son's name is Andrew (different language, same name), who is 25 and who teaches skiing at Purgatory/Durango Mountain Resort in Colorado. It also turns out that Andreas has Boulder in his past. He spent the three months in the fall of 2001, studying English at the International Languge Center at the University of Colorado.

One difference right now is Andreas's Adelboden and Andrew's Purgatory. Here, for today at least, spring has come to Switzerland in January. We skied in warm sunshine, with the morning's hard snow softening to corn as the day progressed. There, Purg reported 22 inches of new snow yesterday. Both snow conditions have their own appeal -- soft Rocky Mountain powder or soft corn snow in the Alps. As long as the ground is white in January, skiers and riders can't go wrong. And since I wasn't skiing with my Andrew, it was fun to ski with Andreas, the best-looking ski instructor in Switzerland.