Hoch-Ybrig

18/11/07 2nd day of season.
Easy to reach from Zürich by car, took us 1 hour. Not sure how easy it would be to get their by public transport, I guess you would need to get a train to Einsiedeln and then a bus, maybe someone else can confirm that.
Piste Plan is here.
http://ski.intermaps.ch/hoch-ybrig/flash/index.swf

I am a boarder so the absence of crappy button lifts and T-bars makes the place a good choice.
I would not recommend the red run coming down the right of the Spirstock, a lot of uphill and narrow winding roadway, I spent as much time walking as I did riding,
Other than that all the runs from the other 2 chair lifts were brilliant, not amazingly long, you can get down them all in under 5min, but fun, and not too crowded.
There was hardly any ice on them, and they had a nice mixture of ups and downs to give a bit of a challenge. Fairly straight runs, and at the end of the day as the off-piste snow had been ridden pretty hard all the runs blended into 1 meaning you could pick you own route down avoiding the clumps of people on the way.
The chair lifts were busy but they went at a helluva pace and this meant that the waits weren’t that bad. I guess/hope that as the season goes on the crowds will thin out as people go further into the Alps.
Hoch-Ybrig seemed to be a locals place, I guess as its quite small tour parties aren’t likely to go there. This meant the most people on and off the pistes were of a good standard, and I didn’t see any beginner ski schools snaking across and blocking the pistes.
I didn’t go off piste at all, still trying to get my boarder legs back, but it looked decent enough without being too challenging or dangerous. There was a lot of nice fresh snow and even at the end of Sunday I still saw a lot of untouched places between pistes on the runs coming down from Spirstock.
Its not a place to go to for more than a day. There really being only about 5 runs to do, but as a quick and easy place to reach from Zürich it was brilliant for a slow easy Sunday out.



Not sure I would recommend it for beginners, there weren't that many blue runs up on the mountain. There are some nursery slopes at the bottom before you go up in the Gondola but if you are in a mixed group that would basically mean not seeing each other all day.
Ski rental is at the top of the Gondola.