Area: | Hoch Ybrig |
Base: | 1040m |
Summit: | 1860m |
Skiable vertical: | 800m |
Lifts: | 6 (1 draglift) |
Total lift vert: | 2200m |
Slope orientation: | North-facing |
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For a zoomable, scrollable map of the areas, see this online map using Openstreetmap or Opencyclemap.
Hoch-Ybrig is a short distance South of Einsiedeln past the Sihlsee. By public transport you'll probably get a train to Einsiedeln and then the post bus from there. Unfortunately there are only two buses back from Weglosen to Einsiedeln in the afternoon, so if you don't want to cut your afternoon short, you're going to end up hanging around in the cold waiting (or in the pleasant bar by the bus stop). By car you can either go to Weglosen or to Tschalun.
Coming from Zurich, you take the train along the Zürichsee to Wädenswil, the train from Wädenswil to Einsiedeln, and then the post bus from Einsiedeln to Hoch Ybrig (Talstation Weglosen). Total time is about 1h35m. This sounds like a difficult journey, but the connections are excellent and it's one of the shorter total times around. Just watch the return bus times. By car it's around an hour from Zürich to the large multi-storey car park at Weglosen, and no waiting in the cold!
Currently the "Snow and Rail" ticket from Zürich (with halbtax card) costs CHF 56, or an adult day pass for the lifts is CHF 49.
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It's a fairly small resort, but there's enough here to keep you busy for a day. Most of the activity focuses around the pair of chairlifts (4- and 6-seaters) serving the broad, ridgey slope between Seebli and Grosse and Kleine Sternen. This offers a multitude of ways down, both on-piste and between them. But there's also the runs in either direction off Spirstock, and if you don't mind taking the (friendly) T-bar up to Laucherenstöckli, you can take the runs down to Steinboden and beyond down to Tschalun.
At the time of writing, the runs down to Tschalun and Weglosen are both open, but it's far from clear why the Weglosen one is marked as a black.
It's a friendly place, with lots of local regulars, and there's a mix of open and tree-lined slopes, giving some variety. There's no official jump park, but there are a few jumps and a rail set up near the top of the 6-seater chairlift. Even better, there's an unusually large number of bumps and ridges in the pistes themselves and between them, and depending on conditions several diy ramps.
Going rightwards off the Spirstock is a desperately flat stretch, and it flattens out again curving back round to Seebli. There's a short stretch of scooting on the black down to Weglosen.
The peaks of central Switzerland as seen from Hoch Ybrig
31 December 2007 - Grey skies but clear visibility and lots of still-soft snow. All the pistes are in great condition and the off-piste is enormous and very rideable. The snow has arrived early but the queues are surprisingly short today.
28 January 2006 - A thin layer of fresh snow, and some piste-side soft. Everything is open, including down to Weglosen, with surprisingly reasonable lift queues. Lots and lots of prepared and marked jumps, underneath the two Sternen chair lifts, some of which are mammoth.
1 January 2004 - Fresh snow, sunshine and short lift queues. Everything is open, down to Weglosen and Tschalun, but by the end of the day, the black down to Weglosen (which is just a wiggly red, really) was getting seriously scraped. The forecasted new snow should take care of that, as well as the icyness coming down into Seebli.
The official website is at hoch-ybrig.ch, with plenty of useful information.
For piste maps, you can use the whizz-bang flash gizmo at intermaps.ch
or the pdf lift map available at ybrig.ch under Winter -
Winterpanorama. Snow'n'Rail details are at railaway.ch, and snow conditions are at wispo.stnet.ch under "Zentralschweiz".