American Made – The Legendary ‘Birdos’ of Switzerland

Andermatt, Switzerland (Shred White and Blue)—On a recent trip to Switzerland with longtime SWB friend Chris Denny and Matt Hansen of Powder Magazine, we drove up to Andermatt in the dark and snow.

On the switchbacks our headlights would beam out onto sheer faces and hanging fields of blue ice; onto those dreams of untracked powder and tomorrow and the tram in the light, and that fear of just how big it really could be.

“Damn,” CD said. “I thought we were going to have to drive out on that cliff.”

We went through a tunnel, crossed a bridge and then we were there, in the little town of Andermatt of four roads and a co-op, a train station and a post office and couple of sports shops, a couple of bars, a pizza place and a couple hotels. There was heavy snow on the roofs and snow on the roads, white-walls and wood-framed windows, and the lights all sparkling white and gold.

“Beautiful.”

At the Hotel Kroner we had big plates of rosti with an egg on top like Swiss Heuvos and grand bulbed glasses of wiesse bier. And we met the legendary Birdos himself, ski maker Dan Lauterle, formerly of Boston and now gone native and married to a Swiss woman, Heidi, with a baby on the way.

“Where are you from?” CD asked, because at first we all thought that he was Swiss, too.

Birdos had slept on a landing between two floors when he first moved to Andermatt in 2004. And every day he rode the tram up to ski the giant relief of the Gemsstock, the thigh-shaped powder faces and plummeting ridgelines of almost 6,000 vertical feet per run. Then he met his future mother-in-law. Then his wife. And then he started building skis.

“It’s something that’s in direct response to skiing here – to skiing mountains this big,” says Birdos as we drink more beer, and he sips tea. “The wood is so resilient, and the edges are the biggest I could find, so that they match up to what people here are going to ski.”

He is mountain climber thin and bright-eyed with a thin mustache and beard like a kind of red-haired George Harrison on skis. He shows us the map of the Gurstchen-gletscher off the peak, the yellow marked ‘Descent/Freeride route’ on one side, and the B-Russi-Run, the ‘Pista Dificile’ besides.

It makes me a little nervous without any reference point as to how exposed we will be. “Are those the only ways down?”

We wake to bells in the morning, every half an hour until 7 am when they suddenly ring more than 100 times, and CD and I wonder if the bellringer has lost his mind.

“Dude.”

We drink espresso and eat meat and bread and cheese, then meet Birdos in his shop to see the Fat Bird, the famed Puder Luder (‘powder whore’) and the Ghetto Chicken skis, with the 132mm tips which are what Hansen and I ride.

“Are you sure you don’t want to go fatter?” Birdos asks.

“Maybe after lunch,” I say.

There is a space heater and red walls like a little art studio, the river out the window that rages with run-off in the spring but is quiet as ice, and the pizza place right across the road. There is the tram where we rise up into the peaks through the clouds to the top of the world.

“Are you kidding me?”

It hasn’t snowed in a week and there is still plenty of powder everywhere to see. Plenty of peaks that seem unclimbable except for angels and goats, mountains after mountains that roll away in great waves, and that stomach floppy thrill of vertigo.

“Wow.”

In three runs we burn half a day. We are thrilled and terrified from moment to moment, exhilarated and exhausted, sweating through our base layers as we traverse over ‘Pucker Ridge’ to the giant bowl of snow, to the couloirs and chutes as steep as skyscrapers, then linking turns down the ‘Fitness Gully’ to our long traverse back to town, over the river and past all the white hay houses waiting for the summer cows.

We are in the little Birdos factory down the street, with ski presses, a wall of cores, and the outlines for customization of each ski. We are in the pizza place, the River House for more wiesse bier, and waking up in the morning again to the bells. We drive the car onto the train and go over the mountains, trying to remember and point to everything we got to ski.

Thanks, Birdos, for being Shred White and Blue’s expat American guide.

Birdos Skis: www.birdos.com
All sorts of Wiki scoops on Andermatt, its whopping 1,200 locals, and even a photo of the church from whence we heard the bells: Wikipedia
The lovely Activ Kronen Hotel
The River House
And keep an eye on Powder Mag online for Matt Hansen’s video interview with the Birdos himself.

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