J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by ise

Ian Wickham wrote:
Agreed it is not the perfect translation, and I would not want to translate anything for business using babelfish, but it suffices for a holiday booking.

It really, really doesn't, they produce language that's nearly unreadable and it's always obvious where it's come from. If you can do a greeting and sign-off in the host language that's going to look just fine, forcing someone to decode what ends up as nonsense speak can be irritating.

Ian Wickham wrote:
This is a personal preference, but I always translate my emails into the receiving language, a sign of respect more than any thing else.... 8)

That's OK if you do speak the language, if you're running through Google translator or Babelfish etc then it's not a great idea, they produce such horrible langue it's nearly impossible to read.

Snow Time wrote:

ise wrote:I think you're mistaken in thinking that English Tour Operators are anything other a minority in most ski stations, particularly in places like St Anton

I wasn't talking about any nation's tour operators, only tour operators in general. If you enquire about room availability, either by telephone or online, at larger hotels in any ski resort in Austria, France or Switzerland you will find very few (including St Anton because I have just tried 3 hotels).

Using Tour Operators to go skiing is generally a UK thing, the rest of Europe don't do it to the same extent. Finding a hotel or pension for ski trips just isn't a problem for the rest of Europe. I'm sure you did have a problem, people in UK frequently report having problems, the fact you might all be picking the same tiny fraction of accommodation using things like tripadvisor or the ski guides might go a long to explaining why that is.

Snow Time wrote:Having tried to arrange a DIY skiing holiday in the past the problem seems to come when booking the larger hotels which, as Ian says, tend to be booked up by the TOs.

I think you're mistaken in thinking that English Tour Operators are anything other a minority in most ski stations, particularly in places like St Anton.

Snow Time wrote:Many smaller hotels and guest houses can be found on the Internet but you are taking a gamble unless they come with a personal recommendation. Trip Advisor (www.tripadvisor.co.uk) is good for getting an honest opinion on a hotel.

It's no doubt a great resource but it's pretty inadequate in terms of coverage. My experience with user reviews of hotels and ski stations is that some are fairly comical, some are pretty clearly spam by the owners or operators and many are just from people with amazingly odd perspectives while the journalist reviews clearly reflect who paid for the freebie they were on.

Ian Wickham wrote:

daved wrote:"You might struggle with DIY anywhere TO's are in control,"

The point I was making is popular resorts for example St Anton are controlled by the various TO's, although it is not a resort that I have had experience of it is heavily promoted by the TO's so accommodation
is brought up heavily in the resort, making it harder not impossible for the independent traveller to book quality accommodation. There is always accommodation available my point still is that you have to search a little bit harder to find it. 8)

It's not very hard, most of Europe don't use tour operators, they just pick the phone up and book. I suspect the problems people from the UK experience are more to do with language than anything else.

I doubt we'll see much more than a few cm of snow at ski station heights. The problem is limited long-wave radiation at night so the snow-pack isn't cooling in any appreciable way, by the afternoon the instability is so major they're having to blast and run across the ski stations which is unusual. Some of the tourists still seem to be trying to see how hardcore they can look just before they die though.

Out up high and remote the last few days it's been extremely challenging conditions to move in.

http://blog.i-g.ch/index.php?2009/04/12/813-les-avalanches-de-printemps

Strangely enough, I was skiing down there the other day and my friend commented that some of the pylons had different ages and had obviously been hit like this. We'd just been stranded on the ridge above for while touring back into the resort when they started to clear that slope.

Snow conditions off-piste in the afternoon remain pretty awful as well.

It's a great trip and unusual to be able to climb inside a glacier like that, particularly enjoyable for Mrs Ise who doesn't always get to join my trips.