The Ski Runs of Switzerland, a 1957 volume by early British ski journalist James Riddell, opens with a black-and-white frontispiece showing a monstrous, ski-tracked face. Despite a straight-on shot, light highlights the steep 35-40 degree slope and 3,920 feet of vertical — the ideal ski run. Without a caption, the illustration is simply listed as “Laub, Engelberg.”
I’d looked at the photo many times but never truly grasped the reality until a sunny February day in 1996, when I found myself on top of this dream run, with a foot of newly fallen, light snow spread out below. My guide, a native Engelberger named Geny Hess, graciously offered the first tracks, and I didn’t hesitate to accept.
Many gratifying turns later, Hess pulled up at a rock where the slope steepened. Digging a pit for emphasis, he confessed to a long-ago humiliating ride down the Laub. Skiing alone (foolishly, he admitted), the slope had come loose after three turns. In seconds, he reached 100 km/h in a billowing powder cloud that extended 3,280 feet to the bottom. Hess popped up, buried to the chest, minus his rucksack and skis, barely alive but much wiser. He mused that he’d had a guardian that day, as Engelberg — Angel Mountain — lived up to its name. There was a certain symmetry to this story, as Hess had selflessly appointed himself my ski guardian, hotelier, chef, and wine tutor — the only cost my appreciation.
In the mid-’90s, few knew about Engelberg’s now renowned freeride terrain. But there were rumours, and in those pre-Internet days, they were as good as Instagram. When our ragtag magazine crew tracked a storm to arrive unannounced, the only place willing to accommodate our group was the venerable Hotel Hess, built in 1884 and gradually succumbing to age and wear. Hearing American voices in his creaking foyer, Geny Hess emerged from the kitchen in uniform, looking very much like The Muppet Show’s Swedish Chef and immediately taking on ambassadorial duties.
A bear of a man with a lumberjack’s beard and a shock of dark hair (he never wore a hat), Hess diligently guided us — in locked-leg wedeln fashion — around Titlis Glacier’s sneering crevasses into the legendary Laub and, as if it were the natural progression, down a complex geological wonder known as the Galtiberg — a backcountry run he’d pioneered 30 years earlier with friends. At every stop in the hour-long descent, he smiled broadly, happy to share a personal watershed not just with guests but also with the eldest of his three sons, named for the paterfamilias and already following in his footsteps. At one point, staring across the valley, Hess noted solemnly, “I remember the day — June 5th, 1965. We started in powder at the top and ended in corn right here — then we had to walk.”
It was clear “Sager Geny” — a local nickname that resonates with wisdom and experience — was Engelberg’s original freerider, an honorific still given at age 79.
Later, Hess guided us into his renowned 300-year-old wine cellar, carved into the limestone beneath the hotel. After sampling many bottles and sharing plenty of laughter, we staggered out of the cobweb-covered catacombs decorated with hunting trophies and photos of Swiss ski star Erica Hess (no relation), for whom Hess was a personal mentor. A drunken night ensued, with Hess’s nouvelle cuisine dishes shattering our expectations of Swiss fondue. It seemed the town’s renaissance man had taken us under his wing. And that was, in fact, the truth of it.
Decades earlier, Hess had left Engelberg to attend hotel management school in Lausanne, followed by a chef apprenticeship in Zermatt and years managing the cellars for Bürgenstock Hotels, during which he explored his homeland for oenological treasures. These varietal, terroir-focused wines became his passion and signature. In 1974, he returned to Engelberg to run Hotel Hess with his wife Trudi. He had declared his intention to marry her at six years old; at 22, he made it happen. They operated the hotel until 2001, when they decided to sell to developers due to a structural re-fit that would have been financially unmanageable.
The closing of the hotel’s doors opened opportunities elsewhere. Hess quickly became sought after as a wine consultant and respected columnist, and wine turned into the family’s main business. In 2017, he launched a storefront — Hess Selection — on Engelberg’s Dorfstrasse, offering wines to the public and supplying hotels with rare selections. Equally knowledgeable, Geny Hess Jr. now runs the operation. Still, whenever I visit Engelberg, Sager Geny insists on meeting at the shop as if his old wine cellar has been relocated above ground.
The last time I was there, we sipped a favourite vintage, chatting about old times and the inevitable changes since then, his beard and shock of hair now as white as the snow crowning Titlis. As its de facto freeride pioneer and steady supporter, Geny Hess both witnessed and took part in Engelberg’s development into a global freeride hotspot. However, he says his main interest these days is “to feel good,” and that the mix of wine, food, and skiing remains the best way to do that. Still, he can look back with pride on the golden days when he could ski the Laub for a week, carving new tracks each time and randomly inviting wide-eyed pilgrims from his hotel for the run of a lifetime.
