Skiing in Garmisch in March

We are planning a trip to Garmisch in early March, does anybody have any experience of the area and quality of snow at that time of the year.
Also can anybody recommend a hotel, preferably with an outdoor pool.

Hi,

I haven't been there before, but am also planning to go for a weekend trip in early March. It looks like a good resort - the advantage for us was proximity to Munich airport.

There's a good website here:
http://www.zugspitze.de/main_en.php

- which has an interactive map showing the ski-ing area.

We haven't found accommodation yet - the friend I'm going with has emailed the tourist board.

Have you found your hotel yet?

And has anyone else on this forum been there and able to recommend hotels/guesthouses? We're trying to work out where we might stay without needing to bus or drive around the resort too much.

Hi Guy's

I spent a week in Garmisch in January, great resort. I was in a family group of 9. We stayed at the Dorint Sport Hotel, contact Angelique Snavely (Reservations) Ph: 0049 8821 706 605. If you "google map"82467 Garmisch Partenkirchen for location, www.dorit.com. Super quality 4 star hotel not cheap but worth it. Great pool area (not outdoor)if you need any further hints , mail me at m.rigney@ltr.ie . Regards, Mike.

We returned early today - had a great time, fantastic snow.

Our hotel was this one - [http://www.hotel-garni-alpspitz.de/winter/winter.html] - in Grainau which is just outside the main area of Garmisch. The hotel was comfortable, if a little dated, with no restaurant, but an excellent breakfast and coffee and cake between 3.30 and 5.30pm plus a very nice sauna/fitness area. You'd need a car if you stayed here.

It snowed on Friday and Saturday. We went up to the Zugspitz the first day, which was a mistake because it was so snowy and windy and rather bleak up there. So we drove down to Hausberg and ski-ied below the treeline instead, which was much better and very pretty.

Good points - excellent for confident intermediates as there are plenty of red and black runs. We did the Kandahar - which will be the 2011 World Cup run - on the last day when the sun came out a bit although the snow was still excellent. I wouldn't want to tackle it if the snow conditions weren't so good as it was still icy in places and I would think it would get very mogulled. There's an alternative lovely long red run instead (no 4 on the piste map).

We had a group ski lesson for three hours - more as a way of learning to navigate the runs. The instructors were very pleasant with excellent English, but still rather of the "plant the pole, extend and bend ze knees" school of tuition rather than explaining the benefits of using your carving skis properly. (There's nothing I haven't been told by instructors before, it's just getting my brain and my legs to do it that's the problem )).

It was easy to get there from Munich airport - allow two hours if it's snowing - although we did hit a bit of traffic on the way back as weekenders headed back. There's also a train directly from Munich airport in the winter season.

It was cheaper than the French Alps, but definitely less sophisticated - not quite as good for people-watching! Garmisch itself was very quiet. We ate an excellent Italian restaurant in the centre on Saturday, and a rather spooky restaurant in Grainau full of the owners' dolls on Friday - it was called Liesl Puppen (Liesl's Dolls) - the food was good again, and plentiful, but weird to have all these naff-looking dolls staring at you.

The "happy ski card" lift pass covers other resorts like Mittenwald - ideal if you have a car, but also accessible by train.

Bad points - I wouldn't recommend the resort for early intermediates as there aren't many blue runs.

And I would imagine there could be bad lift queues in very peak season as the cable cars are extremely slow, although the gondolas are a good alternative.

The piste grading is on the easy side - either that or my ski-ing has improved :-). Some of the reds would be blues in France I would think, and we hit some sections where you needed to pole along on a red run.

All in all a great long weekend break which didn't cost a fortune. I'd definitely go there again if I wasn't looking to run up lots of ski-ing miles and perhaps only had a short time to get away.

hi, we goin to garmisch at easter for a short wknd skiing,(2 days) and was looking at staying in grainau, would that be the best option for the lifts, we also need a couple o 3 bars to unwnd in after,but dont need it too lively.cheers

Hello,

Grainau is very quiet and some distance from the lifts.

I'd suggest if you want to be near bars that you stay in Garmisch itself where there was a selection of restaurants and bars.

The resort is best if you have a car, as there didn't seem to be any accommodation near the lifts themselves.

I'm in the process of organising a group of colleages for a trip to Garmisch also in early March. There are currenly 10 of us going and I was thinking of booking a hotel in the centre of town. There was space in the one near the ski jump but we decided the timings of the flights was touch and go for getting there before the private lift closed and with it not actually being on the piste we decided to give it a miss.

There were several hotels in town showing vacancies when I checked though.