Stories

He attended the sports secondary school in Engelberg for five years and graduated in 2017 with the third-best Matura examination of the year. Even as a child, he spent many skiing hours on the Titlis with the Hergiswil ski club. And you can still find him in Engelberg now and then in his free time - whether it's freeriding in winter or biking or golfing in summer.  In the meantime, Marco Odermatt has become an indispensable Swiss alpine ski racer. His successes increase from year to year and with the Olympic gold medal in the giant slalom discipline in 2022, Marco Odermatt once again proved his enormous talent.

Michelle Gisin grew up in Engelberg in a family of skiers. Her siblings Dominique and Marc Gisin are also among the important ski players here in Switzerland. From an early age, she spent time with her siblings on the ski slopes of Engelberg and discovered her passion for skiing. At the age of 15, she transferred from the Gymnasium of the Stiftsschule Engelberg to the Sportmittelschule and skied her first FIS races. After graduating from the Engelberg Sports Secondary School in June 2012, she decided to turn her great passion into her profession. From then on, Michelle was able to celebrate countless successes and shows her skills year after year.

Michelle Gisin has been the official brand ambassador of the Engelberg-Titlis region since 2021. Click here for the media release >>

Dominique Sabine Gisin is a former Swiss ski racer. Gisin lives in Engelberg. Her younger brother Marc and her younger sister Michelle were or are also ski racers. She specialised in the disciplines downhill, super-G and giant slalom. Her greatest success was winning the gold medal in the downhill at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.

Gisin took her Matura at the Stiftsschule Engelberg. In summer 2018, she completed her bachelor's degree in physics at ETH Zurich. From October 2018 to April 2019, she was CEO of the Swiss Sports Aid Foundation, since when she has served as a delegate of the Foundation Board. In April 2018, she was elected to the Board of Directors of Bergbahnen Engelberg-Trübsee-Titlis. In the 2017/18 season, Gisin worked for Swiss television as a co-commentator.

Marc Gisin is a former Swiss ski racer. He has been a member of the Swiss-Ski A squad since the 2010/11 season. His older sister Dominique and his younger sister Michelle were and are also ski racers. Like his sisters, Marc also attended the sports equipment school in Engelberg. 

Gisin announced his retirement from top-level sport on 30 November 2020. He has been studying business psychology at the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts since the 2020/21 winter semester.

Lena Häcki from Engelberg is a Swiss biathlete. She attended the Sportmittelfachschule in Engelberg and successfully completed her Matura in 2014. She won several World Cup medals as a junior and made her debut in the Biathlon World Cup in 2014, where she is one of the leading athletes on her team. From 2018, she stood on the podium several times in relay races, and in December 2019 she managed to do so for the first time in an individual competition.

Wolfenschiesser Nina Christen is a successful Swiss sports shooter. She practices the two rifle disciplines of small bore and air rifle shooting.

Nina Christen comes from a shooting family and grew up in Wolfenschiessen. She has been shooting since 2006 and competing since 2011. After graduating from high school in 2014 and completing her top sports R.S., she was employed by the Swiss Army as a temporary military officer. In March 2019, Christen celebrated her first World Cup victory. As a member of the army, she also took part in the 2019 World Military Games in Wuhan. At the 2020 Summer Olympics, which will be held in the summer of 2021, she advanced from 7th to 3rd place in the 10m air rifle shooting final, winning the first medal for the Swiss delegation in the first decision of these Games. A week later, she won the gold medal in the small-bore three-position event with a new Olympic record.

Fabian Bösch moved with his family from Lenzburg (AG) to Engelberg in the canton of Obwalden when he was 5 years old and joined the Engelberg ski club at the age of 6. His coaches soon noticed his talent for alpine ski racing. The foundation stone for his career as a freeskier was laid at the Engelberg Sports Secondary School. As one of the world's best freeskiers today, slopes are his playground. After becoming world champion in slopestyle in 2015, he won the X-Games in Aspen in 2016. 

The Four Hills Tournament is usually where the world's best ski jumpers compete for the title. But freestyle skier Fabian Bösch takes it to the next level: he speeds (backwards!) over the large hill in Engelberg at 90 km/h on his freeskis and performs a next-level double frontflip! Click here for the video >>

Stefan Matter from Engelberg is a Swiss telemark skier. Stefan Matter has been a very successful telemark skier for many years and has achieved countless top ten rankings in World Cup races. He has been celebrated as world champion no less than four times so far. At the 2017 World Championships in Rjukan, Norway, he won the gold medal in the sprint and mixed team disciplines. Two years later, he topped the podium in the Classic and Mixed Team disciplines at the World Championships in La Plagne, France. In 2018, 2019 and 2020 he took the overall victory in the Classic World Cup and in 2020 he won the crystal globe in the overall Telemark World Cup.

Erika Hess is a former Swiss ski racer and comes from the Engelberg Valley below Engelberg.

In the 1980s, the versatile skier dominated women's alpine skiing. She won the overall World Cup in 1982 and 1984 and won a total of 31 times in World Cup races. She also won the discipline World Cup in the slalom from 1981 to 1983 as well as in 1985, and furthermore the World Cup in the giant slalom and in the Alpine combined in 1984.

As a snow sports maniac, you have to know Snowflake, an Engelberg native. Let him sweep you along and show you the joys and wonders of nature through his eyes. Maybe you'll soon meet him on one of your next runs - the eccentric Swiss skier with a philosophy of life that is just as beautiful and unique as his namesake.

To the YouTube VIdeo >>

On the ski slope, he immediately stands out among thousands. His videos go viral on social media. In short: Kilian Weibel, Technical Director of the Engelberg Ski School and member of the "Swiss Snow Demo Team", rocks the slopes!

Kili also proves his solid skiing technique time and again on social media. He has over 24,000 followers on Instagram. He inspires them with his skills, his funny tricks and his ideas. The ski instructor is also creative with his demo team. Ten of them develop choreos and bring out the perfection in high tempo and difficult formations.

Click here for his Youtube chanel >>

There are ski photographers. And Oskar Enander. For the Swede, it is not the action that is in the foreground, but the aesthetics, the play of light and shadow, the landscape. He composes all this like an artist. Often he himself does not know exactly what is to be seen in the pictures. For Enander is colour-blind. For more than 20 years, Oskar Enander has regularly visited Engelberg and continues to fill his collection of incredible nature pictures from year to year.

To his Website >>

Geny Hess has witnessed Engelberg's development into a freeride mecca. He is a freeride pioneer and remembers times when he skied the leafy slope for a week and cut new tracks every time. His passion is to ski down the steepest slopes in the world! You could say that he is the oldest freerider in the world, but he speaks of himself more as a powder specialist.

Here you can learn more about Geny Hess >>

Tobias Geisser from Stans began his career with EHC Engelberg-Titlis and Lucerne in 2012 and is one of the most successful Swiss ice hockey players. Since March 2018, Tobias Geisser has been under contract with the Washington Capitals in the National Hockey League and has been on duty again with the Hershey Bears in the American Hockey League since 2021.
He won the Swiss championship with the EVZ in 2021 before returning to the Hershey Bears for the 2021/22 season.

Sälmi Töngi is something of a star among the Engelberg alpine cheesemakers. There is hardly a Swiss magazine or television station that has not reported on the "gmögigen" cheese maker. There is a good reason for this: Sälmi's Alp Sbrinz AOP, which is more enjoyable than the one from the valley thanks to the variety of herbs in the alpine milk, keeps winning awards and is therefore even more famous than he is. For more than 40 years, Sälmi has been processing 300,000 kilos of cow's milk and 30,000 kilos of goat's milk from farmers in the surrounding alps into alpine cheese summer after summer on the Gerschnialp. The alp, idyllically situated below the Titlis at 1300 metres above sea level, can be easily reached on foot along a beautiful forest path or by taking the nostalgic funicular railway from Engelberg.

To his alps >>

Abbot Chrstian Meyer was elected as the new abbot of Engelberg Monastery in 2010 by the then parish priest Christan. 

Since its foundation in 1120, the Benedictine monastery of Engelberg has shaped the history of the high valley. The monks' current activities largely grew out of the needs of the village. Pastoral care in the parish, educational work at the monastery school, handicraft and service businesses as well as the "Kloster Schreinerei" (monastery carpentry), which mainly works externally, and cultural and landscape conservation are areas in which the monks as well as the increasing number of secular employees of the monastery are involved. Since the beginnings of the monastery, the monks have been teaching young people. Today, the monastery school consists of a grammar school (bilingual Matura D/E) with International Baccalaureate (IB) and a boarding school for boys and girls. The boarding school also accepts pupils who attend the secondary school (IOS) run by the Engelberg local authority and housed on the monastery premises. The Benedictines of Engelberg founded two monasteries in North America: "Conception" in Missouri in 1873 and "Mount Angel" in Oregon in 1882. In 1932, the monastery took on missionary tasks in Cameroon and founded the monastery "Mont Febe" in the capital Yaoundé there in 1964. The monastic community of 21 monks in Engelberg has been led by Abbot Christian Meyer since 2010. The Benedictine Monastery of Engelberg is the second largest employer in Engelberg after Bergbahnen EngelbergTrübsee-Titlis AG. In 2020, the Benedictine Monastery of Engelberg will be able to look back on 900 years of beneficial activity. 

To the monastery Engelberg >>

Florentin Spichtig produces alp cheese, mutschli, alp butter, yoghurt and cream from the approximately 180,000 litres of milk in the Surener alp cheese dairy, which will be rebuilt in 2019. The Surenen alpine cheese dairy at the foot of the pass of the same name is located at the very back of the Engelberg valley - but it belongs to the canton of Uri. However, being at the back of the valley does not mean that the alp is only accessible via a single path.

To the Alp Surenen >>

Albin Amstutz completed an apprenticeship as a truck mechanic in 1986-90. Later he worked for the company Menia AG (today Bürgi AG). When the company had no more work for him as an operational mechanic in winter, he saw this as an opportunity. He reoriented himself and became a qualified ski instructor. It was the beginning of his new professional career. He trained further to become a bungee master, a telemark instructor and also passed the canyoning guide training in 1998. From 1997 to 1999, he completed the training to become a certified mountain guide. 

The via ferratas were built under his direction; he received the order from the mountain railways, the municipality of Engelberg and Engelberg-Titlis Tourism. Of course, he did it together with his fellow mountaineers. They welded most of the material, such as the steel stirrups, themselves.

Dani Perret is co-editor of the three inspiring Outdoor Guides and recently also of the Hike and Fly Guide Central Switzerland. Whether mountaineering, sport climbing, freeriding or a combination of all of these combined with a flight: Dani knows where to find the best conditions. Not only has he brought the legendary pre-season camps to life. When it's lockdown again, he cleans a big rock together with the fire brigade and friends and sets up a family-friendly climbing garden on it.

Christoph Bissig is a luminary on the mountain and has been able to acquire a lot of knowledge about the snow and its dangers, the geographical conditions as well as the local peculiarities in his 30 years of service. He knows the mountain TITLIS like no other and he lives for the mountain.

Here you can learn more about Christoph Bissig and his mountain >>