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| Mt. Titlis is just south of Luzern and takes 2-2.5 hours from Zürich by train plus another 30-45 min to the top by cable car, where the last leg was with the "Rotair" which is the world's first rotating cablecar.
With the "Snow-n-Rail" deal it was about 80 CHF for Halbtax card holders and about 50 CHF for GA holders.
The view at the top of the mountain was incredible and is recommended even if not going for boarding/skiing.
http://www.titlis.ch/karte.php and also a more detailed map is here: http://titlis.ch/index.php?id=194 (click on a Winter 2007/2008 leaflet.)
We went boarding, and only ended up going to about 1/3 of the whole area. As of Nov. 25, only about half of the whole resort was open but we didn't notice. We were only in the areas between Titlis-Stand-Trübsee. The first half of the morning was spent being stranded because of not knowing how to stay on a T-bar lift (we ended up going to the only area with a T-bar lift on the top of the mountain called "Gletscherlift"). It was my first time ever seeing anything like that in my life and fell numerous times and even was dragged upside-down for a meter or two by the T-bar. A few hours later, I hiked my way up and got to another side that had a chair lift (called "Ice Flyer")!
My favorite runs were from Stand to Trübsee. There was a lot of fresh powder (some of which was untouched), not too many flat areas, many steep drops, a lot of crevice type areas that seemed like natural half-pipes, and no rocks or trees, just pure white snow which was blinding at times.
My least favorite, as you know already, was at the top from Klein Titlis down to the bottom of the Gletscherlift (T-bar lift). It also seemed like this part of the resort had the most amount of people.
There were no waits at an of the lifts, all were super fast and efficient. I would have liked to try the area up to Jochstock, but we didn't have time. At around 4:30, the lifts started to close and the fog rolled in and everything was completely whited out. It was scary but also fun at the same time. Going back, there is a short walk from the resort entrance back to the train station, which can be too much after a long day of boarding or skiing. The train ride back to Luzern takes the longest, but overall is a nice day trip if you get there early and make the most of it. At this time, there weren't many people boarding or skiing but there were also many tourists! | |
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I was also at Engelberg on Sunday. We stayed mostly on the left side (between Stand and Truebsee) and the conditions weren't exactly perfect, the snow was pretty thin and very icy in places. Also went for a last run at Jochpass and the slope was just awful in my opinion, though my skier friends were OK with it. Normally, at the end of the day, we'd take the run down to the bottom, but judging by the condition of the slopes at our altitude, we decided to give it a miss this time.
Saying that, the Glacier was pretty good, as mentioned above, but was incredibly cold with a nasty wind.
Engelberg is quite a tough one for boarders, but can be fun, most of the runs are red, and can be pretty narrow, it's also one of the more expensive in the area. Saying that, I still go quite regularly as it's a good challenge.