St Anton Holiday in March 2012

While I concede that my trip is going to be absolutely amazing I think you guys have the better side of the bargain being a few hours away from the Alps at any point in time!

Based on the advice, I'll switch up Zermatt and Chamonix and get into France earlier. Zermatt still looks great in mid April in that trip report. Unfortunately I can't bring the trip forwards at all due to other commitments.

I'll do some research into the Swiss Saver Flexi Pass and crunch some numbers. We'll also being doing quite a bit of backpacking after so a EURail pass isn't off the cards either so that will probably have an impact on the Rail options too.

I'm keen to catch up with Local Ski Guides in the areas because my partner isn't a great skier so it would be good to ski with some guides with great local knowledge rather than just cruise around on my lonesome for weeks on end. Any good recommendations for this approach? Do the resorts have "Ski Guides/Tours" or can you organise anything like this through the Ski Schools?

On another note, due to the backpacking afterwards, I won't be bringing my ski's or boots (my boots are 8 years old and probably need replacing anyway). I'm planning on buying new boots and ski's when I arrive in St Anton and then just mailing them home when I finish up in Zermatt. Any good recommendations on a Ski Shop in St Anton?

I really appreciate all the amazing information I'm receiving.

St Anton is full of places to buy gear. Mind you its usually top dollar in that resort.

I can recommend http://www.pistetopowder.com/ We've used them on several occasions and have never been disappointed.

Hi Cags,

I´ll be doing a similar trip on February, unfortunatelly shorter than yours. I´m going to St Anton and have to book another week somewhere. I was planning Zermatt or Val d' isere, but haven't found an easy way to reach there from St Anton.

Did you find a train form St Anton to Zermatt?

G'day HugoB,

I found heaps of train transfers from St Anton to St Moritz (in Switzerland) as we're heading to St Moritz first. There's then a train from St Moritz onto Zermatt (or in my case, most likely Chamonix first).

It would seem to be pretty easy to get a train from St Anton to Zermatt though. My guess would be from St Anton to Visp (in Switzerland) and then a train from there to Zermatt. It might be better getting an experienced opinion on this though or contacting the Swiss Travel System people (as I haven't been looking into getting from St Anton to Zermatt).

As far as Val d'isere goes, it was on my list in my really early planning days but it seems to be very out of the way when looking at St Anton/Zermatt. When I did some research, Val d'isere is a bit further south in France on the France/Italy border. Chamonix was much, much easier to get to from Switzerland so I removed Val d'isere and went with Chamonix. There's probably much better advice than mine regarding travel to Val d'isere though and it may just be a simple train trip.

As Swingbeep said earlier, getting a Swiss Saver Flexi Pass for travel on the Swiss Travel System well and truly seems to be the way to go.

Cheers
Cags

Sounds like an awesome trip! We'll be in ST Anton the last week of March 8 of us as a stag holiday. A couple of us will get a guide to really see what St Anton is made of and no doubt defeat us! What will you other half make of you abandoning her?! I find this problem with my fiancée as while she's technically good enough she lacks the confidence to tackle the stuff I like to so I end up leaving her or staying with her and cruising around.

My partner doesn't really ski at all. She's tried to learn a few times but has never really got the hang of it and doesn't really enjoy it.

On the plus side, she does like hanging out in the Skiing areas with the scenery, snow and other activities so it's not too hard to convince her to go on a skiing holiday.

As such, getting away is very easy for me ie. I can't ski if I don't get away =p

Normally we would go with other friends on skiing holidays and I'd ski with them. This time it'll just be us two so it's gonna be a bit weird skiing by myself for the 1st time =p I'm hoping it's a weirdly liberating and enjoyable experience but I'll just have to wait and see. Really though, who wouldn't love the opportunity of skiing in the Alps even if you are flying solo!