Weekend winter getaways and a visit with a fox

Spring has rolled around here in Switzerland (not that winter was anything special this year...), but the past few weekends saw me getting a last taste of snow before it all melts away. At the beginning of March, some friends (from Calgary, Alberta, who are currently living in Baden, Switzerland, about an hour away from me) and I traveled to St. Anton, Austria for a weekend of skiing/snowboarding in the Austrian Alps! It was a really great, although exhausting weekend. I definitely paid the price of not having snowboarded in... well let's not figure out how long: my body was sooooo sore and dead on Monday, with a decent goggle tan/burn to boot. Plus I was using equipment that was both backwards and way too big for me. The snow was pretty hard in places since there hadn't been new snow in a week, but we had two gorgeous days in the Alps and a good group of people so it was definitely worth it! Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here's about fifteen thousand words from the weekend (most of these pictures need no caption :) ):

The crew at lunch on the second day.

The park on the afternoon of the second day

Last run of the day; Steph and Remi.

The next weekend (last weekend), I caught a ride with a colleague and her sister to St. Moritz, which is : 

Purple dot is Bern where I live, and blue dot is St. Moritz.

for the Engadiner Skimarathon. To give you an idea of the size of this race, here's some numbers:

10,758  -> # of people in the race, making it the second largest event in the Worldloppet circuit (after the  Vasaloppet in Sweden)

9,357 -> # of skiers racing the full marathon distance

2,303 -> # of women in the race, 

6 -> # of waves that the racers started in (Elite A, B, C; Main class A, B (my class); and General class)

40 -> # of minutes between when the first wave starts and when the last skiers go

16 -> # of people with the name 'Sonja' :)

0 -> # of times I fell!

The marathon is in its 43rd year, and the half marathon only its 4th. While it would have been way more epic to do the full 42km, I have not trained as much as I usually do and as of race day I had skied exactly 5 times, once of which was on a barely snow-covered field in a nearby park and the last of which was on January 6th, so I figured I should probably stick with the half marathon. 

It took us about 5.5 hours to get there including food breaks and traffic jams, which I think is the longest I have driven in one stretch since being in Switzerland. We got in at about 8pm, and after a delicious carb-loading dinner at the hotel restaurant we all crashed in our hotel rooms in prep for the early morning the next day.

Now for a little background on St. Moritz: this town of 5000 people sits at about 1800 m, or 6000 ft, and is without a doubt one of, or I think the richest resort town in Switzerland. The main streets are lined with shops filled with fur coats, diamond necklaces and jewelry, and basically every fancy, expensive clothes brand you can think of. 

Some fun facts:

-The town hosted the 1928 and 1948 Winter Olympic Games

-St. Moritz gets over 300 days of sunshine a year

-The canton where St. Moritz is located, Graubünden, is the only canton where the dialects of the ancient Romansh are still spoken, although in St. Moritz, the majority (60%) speak German, with Italian coming in second at 20% and Romansh a meer 5%.

After a shocking 5:45 wake-up and an amazing marathon buffet breakfast, we hopped on a shuttle to the start of the race, Maloja, which was 18 km up the valley from St. Moritz. We collected our bibs:

I've never had a bib with my name on it before! 

and joined the crowds...

Skis laid out in Hauptklasse (Main class) B

Me in my stylin' yellow poncho pre-race. I am so grateful for it, as it was pretty windy and cold before the start!

The pre-race preparation didn't really involve much besides dropping off our bags to be taken to the finish and laying our skis out, so it was very relaxed and chill unlike races back home where I usually end up sprinting to the start area with 30 seconds to spare.

The throngs of people moving to the start area...

The first racers started at 8:40 and my class left at 9:05. Marathon and half-marathon racers start together but men and women are separated for about the first few hundred meters or so. Then the two trails come together and form a wide and extremely long human snake weaving its way down the valley to Pontresina (half-marathon finish) or S-chanf (marathon finish). The majority of the race is flat to slightly downhill, with a few hills in the middle and at the end.

For me, the first 5 km flew by, as I was mostly concentrated on not getting tripped up by the hundreds of skis and poles around me. After that, I could definitely tell that my fitness was not at its peak and that I hadn't skied enough prior to the race, but it was still really enjoyable and an amazing experience to be around that many people. Although this is a skate race, I spent the first kilometre or two double poling as that's all you can do.

I literally had time to take my camera out of my pocket and take some pictures at the bottom of this hill while waiting to go up it. This happened quite frequently on any up- or downhill throughout the race.

One little moment that made the race really memorable for me was about 3/4 of the way through, as we were going through St. Moritz where there were spectators all along the side of the course cheering the skiers on. Since most racers have their name on their bib, it is easy to cheer people on by name. As I was passing by a crowd of spectators, a little boy called out 'Hup Sonja'. It doesn't sound that special or memorable written out like that, but it put a smile on my face and I picked up my pace.

I didn't ski as fast as I had expected I would, but I guess I have to factor in the human traffic jams on the hills and the wind. I ended up finishing 85th out of 627 women who skied the half marathon, 26th of 127 in my class, Hauptklasse B, and 7th of 22 in the age group 1991-1992. All in all I was pretty happy with how the weekend went, both with my skiing and the experience in general.

The army trucks that transported our belongings from the start to the finish.

My colleague's sister picked me up at my finish and we drove to S-chanf to pick up her sister who had skied the full marathon. This is looking from the road to the bag pick-up area and the dozens of army trucks and hundreds of people.

A little town on the way home

The next week I was in the field with Tiphanie. Here are a few pictures of the clubhouse where we stay each week in Preles:

The tennis courts and the sports centre, with the clubhouse on my right

The clubhouse from the parking lot

The main area

View out the front window

On the second day of field work, as we were driving along a smaller but paved mountain road we came upon this little guy in a field on the side of the road. He was burying a piece of bread for later eats. We stopped the car and got out to take some pictures, and he ended up coming up pretty close to us, about 5 meters away. His right eye didn't look so well and we think he had maybe been hit by a car, and thus couldn't successfully hunt for food so was eating whatever he could get, including some bread that someone had left just inside the forest on the side of the road where we parked.

Photo cred: Tiphanie

Photo cred: Tiphanie

And to end off this extremely long, but hopefully understandable post, a picture of the Alps from my favourite lunch spot in the Jura. :)

-Sonja 

The Jura

I am longgg overdue for an update on my work here in Switzerland, so here goes:

When I last wrote about what I was up to work-wise, I was in the Alps, which look like this:

and this:

and this:

and this:

andddd finally, this:

But now, after an 8-week-long camera-trap session in the Alps, we have removed all the cameras from there and as of the beginning of February they are now set in the Jura mountains, which are here (green):

The green circle is the Jura mountains; the red circle is the Central Alps, where we were working in December and January; and the purple dot is Bern, where I live.

and look like this:

This is taken from a little lunch spot we found above this huge restaurant basically in the middle of nowhere. As you can see, these mountains are much more tame than the Alps.

The Jura mountains were quite a contrast for us: going from towering, sky-high, cliff-like mountains to rolling, tree-covered hills was a shock, but while they are not quite as majestic as the Alps, the Jura mountains have some really special qualities. Maybe it's just because we (the interns) now know what we are doing, but it seems as though there is a more relaxed atmosphere to these mountains. 

Setting out the cameras in the first week of February, it was -10 and clear blue skies. Not much snow though...

We came across this elephant just hanging out beside the trail..

Looking out into the fog. It is always foggy/cloudy here in the mornings, but usually burns off once the sun is up.

Can you say colour contrast! Taken from a car, driving along the plateau on top of the Jura.

Flat fields on either side, quite a change from the Alps, where if you go off the road, you fall down a cliff...

A little shed out in the mountains. 

The sun rising over the Alps, and in the bottom of the picture you can see a funiculaire heading down the mountain.

The funiculaire track. Great way to get from the top of the mountain to the bottom, or vice versa.

This was taken at the beginning of February... Granted, this is near the bottom of the Jura mountains, but still, goes to show how much snow we've had... 

Peeking through the trees at the Alps

Another lunch-spot view, from Vue-des-Alpes (fitting name, I think)

This was taken last week (23-25 Feb). We've had a bit of snow in the Jura, but not much, and this is near the highest point...

Taken from the same place as the first Jura picture up above, although facing a different way (towards the Alps!), and about a month later. 

The previous shot zooooooomed in

Geri took this picture of me while we were out in the field a few weeks ago :)

We are staying in an awesome sports clubhouse in Preles, a little village at about the halfway point of the Lac de Bienne, but on the mountain top. The houses right at the edge of the mountain have an amazing view of the Alps across the plateau. Unfortunately the clubhouse is not one of those houses, but it is situated on a great strip of land with wonderful running trails, a huge tennis court, and a massive sports centre (I have so far only made use of the first of those three things). The clubhouse has a main area on the first floor, complete with kitchen, fireplace, hugeeeee TV, and enough chairs and table space for the entire population of Preles. On the second floor, accessed by a hideable staircase/ladder, are a bunch of bunkbed-filled bedrooms (alliteration...). A few of the rooms even have skylights, so before I drift off I can do a bit of stargazing. :) (Granted, I don't wear my glasses when I sleep, so the stars look more like blurry car headlights, but it's the idea that counts!)

There has been a new addition to our camera-trap team: Tiphanie from France has joined us, and as camera-trapping is only a 2-person job (and that's all that our trusty Justy can fit in with all the gear), we have made up a rotating schedule of 2 weeks in the field and 1 week in the office. This just so happens to be my week in the office, which worked out well because I am trying to plan a snowboarding trip to Austria for this weekend, and the clubhouse in Preles does not have wireless internet. It's also nice to have a chill week at home, get caught up on office work, and get in some quality training in preparation for the ski half marathon I signed up for on the 13th of March! Yikes! Unfortunately I haven't skied since January 9th when I was in Gstaad, as we have had next to zero snow here in Bern, but I have been doing a fair bit of running so I hope I am ready for it...

Quick language update: 

 - German: slowly but surely coming. I'm starting to understand more basic phrases and words, but still a long ways to go...

 - French: as Tiphanie only speaks French, I've had lots of chances to practice! I think my French is getting better, although at the end of a full day of French-speaking, my brain is so exhausted from having to actually think to produce sentences that it just gives up on me and I have to resort to sign language. Haha, not really, but it's crazy how much more work it is to speak and understand a language that is not one's own. I've learned a ton of new words and recently realized something that totally messed me up when I was in Paris: 'allez tout droit' does NOT mean, as translated word-for-word, go very/all RIGHT. Instead, it means 'go straight'! What kind of crazy person decided that?? When I asked some locals for directions to the train station while in Paris in January and they kept saying 'tout droit', I just thought it was a weird way of saying go right... Needless to say, I barely made my train...

Alrighty then, I'm going to bring this post to a close. Look for an update soon about Austria (if it happens) and the big race!

Cheers,

Sonja :)