Bluebird Day in Feldberg

*Daughter continuing to surprise me by getting air!*

Feb 2020 – Welp, the winter this year in Germany was awful, inconsistent, and simply didn’t see much snowfall. On top of that, not long after we did Feldberg on this date, #Coronavirus decided to rear its ugly head in Europe and force all slopes throughout the Alps to close effective early March. So, basically, when we went to Feldberg for the second time in March, we weren’t aware it was our last snow trip for the season. As the folks in Baden-Württemburg say, “Es passiert”.

Essentially, we had a feeling that winter was on its last legs. Feldberg had also, luckily, seen a week’s worth of snowfall with ideal conditions during the day, so we decided to make a day run out of it since the drive was so short. I also had a busted wing from my last trip to the French Alps…so this one was literally just for the kids.

*My spouse Mom’ing the heck out of our car*

We were really pleased with the weather considering our last visit to Feldberg.

We should have left a half hour earlier than we did. Schneesport Thoma begins their lessons at 10:00 we, stupidly, continue to think getting to slopes 30min before our target time is early enough. There weren’t any delays in our drive, but the parking deck was a little busy and it just took some time. Murphy’s Law decided to test us, also, and both kids had to pee right after we arrived and got them dressed, which is great! After splitting up so Kate could get them to a toilet and so I could get them registered, we nearly made our time. Having to go buy my daughter a lift ticket was also a bit of a pain as you have to do this at the lifts next to registration and don’t come with registration by default. She for a full day and my boy for a half day went for about 84€ plus the kid lift ticket at 26€.

Of course I was fuming by the time she got her ticket because we were basically 10 minutes late. My brain immediately calculates how much money we waste by being late. Father pains are a curse when you go completely insane over that minuscule amount of money then drink 20 euro in beer within 3 hours.

*Conditions this go-around were a lot better*

My daughter ended up skiing with bigger kids and my Son’s class looked crowded. There must have been nearly 20 kids with maybe 5 instructors on-hand trying to keep them coral’d. It looked like mostly chaos with a slight bit of control to it. Even considering that, they do seem to improve the kids from the start to finish. The boy started out on the tiny magic carpet then “Graduated” in about 30 minutes to the big boy carpet.

The girl kind of blew us away and continues to surprise us in terms of her progress, which we lend, in part, to her instructors. Her biggest progress, so far, has been at Feldberg and Ehrwald. So at this point, I will compliment Feldberg’s ski school, for sure.

She is fearless on the mountain.
Daughter’s instructor to a very proud father

She started out on a T or J-bar (Tellerlift) with her class and demonstrated quickly she could handle it without falling off. She was even getting air (on purpose!). By the end of her session, she was leading bigger kids, taking the adult chair lift, and completely going up the T-bar and back down by herself. It was a pretty enlightening day for me, personally, to see her making so much progress.

Lunch was filled with awesomely bad euro-techno music stereotypical of German-speaking ski areas.

I know I mentioned only having tossed the boy into a half day: several instructors have told us that kids under 6 have a tendency to get pretty tired if you go for the full day. We’ve personally seen this a few times so, if you can deal with the shorter time, I’d recommend half-days for the younger kids.

During the second half of my boy’s day, we figured we’d gamble with his attention span and put him on a snowboard. Once he told us he was done via falling down then not moving anymore, we noticed Feldberg has a sledding area. We weren’t aware of this since, the last time we visited , the weather was so bad we couldn’t see it. Use of the sled slope doesn’t cost anything; however, renting a sled for the day is only 5€. Bring your own sled for any downtime. We also noticed an area directly next to the sled hill that had a low rope-pulley system that your kid can use to be taken up to a bunny slope if they’re just starting out and you don’t want to fork over €€€ for ski school.

Good day-trip. Ski school. Sled area. McDonald’s afterwards. No complaints!

Looking towards Feldberg’s “peak”
Junior Mint alone on the Tellerlift!
Leading those older German kids like a pro
Noah and his buddy look like two old guys at a mall waiting for their wives to come out of Hallmark.
No need to buy food when he’ll just eat snow!
Trying to explain….things about snowboarding to him.
Kate looking for our daughter up there, somewhere.
The sledding area at Feldberg.
Both kids on a sled. I’m exhausted behind them from towing them.
A brief moment of happy standing before falling!