J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by bedrock barney

Interesting reading. Not a problem for us when we head out to Norway/Sweden this month. Our hire car will have studded tyres as standard (which will be a new experience). Looking forward to some Tommi Makinen style driving!

If you last skied there 7 or 8 years ago, I'm guessing the exchange rate was about 2 CHF to the £. I think it's about 1.45 at the moment which has been the going rate for the last 3 or 4 years.

Therefore it's bound to feel about 1/3rd more expensive, notwithstanding the affect of inflation over the period. We've skied Zermatt twice in the last 2 years. I did a report on our 1st trip as below:

https://www.j2ski.com/ski-chat-forum/posts/list/15193.page

On the mountain, coffee and soft drinks were approx £3 to £4. Meals such as Rosti were between £15 and £20. It's possible to eat out in the town without blowing the bank account but you would need to restrict your choice to pizzas etc (I think these were £12 to £15). Restaurants offering traditional menus were considerably more. On our 2nd trip we spent over £350 on our final night in a nice restaurant (4 adults and 2 teenage children)! This was a mid price restaurant by the way! We were half board on our 1st trip so somewhat insulated from eating out costs. We self catered 2nd time round.

For our family of 4, I estimate that we spent between £75 and £100 every day on the mountain (lunch and separate coffee stop). We tend to ski the full day so need to keep well fuelled and I'm not keen on lumping around a backpack.

Therefore it ain't cheap. Superb resort though. We think it's one of the best we've skied.

Glad you had a great time. Looking forward to the write up.

You could try an osteopath. They are very good at looking at misalignment issues etc. I've had very positive results in the past.

I hope you have a good time Icy. We stayed in 1950 in march 2011 or maybe 2012, I can't recall. Probably not what you want to hear but we found it be pretty flat later on the evening. I'm pretty sure all of the accommodation is apartments so I guess everyone has a living room and kitchen if they wish to stay in. George's wine bar is very pleasant but not exactly accompanied by bangin' tunes. There is a decent bar on the main street and we usually had a glass of beer there after each day's skiing - I'll see if I can work out which one it was. We ate out three times but two of the meals were mediocre at best.

I think there is more going in 1800 although we didn't try it in the evening.

The skiing is great by the way! It's proper ski in ski out. Be careful with your ski hire (if you are hiring). Our skis were very poor. Mrs BB most unimpressed as one of her bindings disintegrated on the 2nd day.

Look forward to hearing how you get on.

When choosing my current helmet I did try on a couple POC variants. They do make your head look a bit like a football but I would have gone for one if the fit was good. I actually didn't find them comfortable and ended up with a Smith Optics helmet. I think it's the Vantage model. It's been brilliant - really comfortable and it also has top opening vents if the temperatures are high.

I have to say I would certainly hesitate before buying a ski helmet for £20 from a UK retailer. That being the final retail price, it presumably means that the helmet will have been manufactured for perhaps a fiver? The retail price has to include profit for the shop, packaging, shipping costs, profit for the manufacturer, product design costs and finally manufacturing costs.

I'm very happy to cut costs in life where I deem it appropriate. For example, I'm happy to wander about in a t shirt bought from TXMax for £5. If it concerns my health and safety I'd much prefer to pay a bit more for a product that has a lot of R&D behind it.....

My twopenneth!

Brucie, I fear that you are turning into Donald Trump........