J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by ise

mjjw69 wrote:I for one have never taken the P1ss, however some airlines put in a limit just to make money on excess baggage.

No they don't, they offer you a substantial discount as a skier to get your business. You're allowed to take not only your full luggage allowance but you're then allowed to throw a bulky pair of skis on that require manual handling for less per kilo than the guy sat next you who took an extra rucksack on containing, using a random example, expedition mountaineering gear.

it is indeed a joke, skiers get the cheapest luggage charges around and yet have continually taken the p*ss with ski bags forcing airlines to impose weight limits. That's not to excuse airlines having unrealistic limits but I'm baffled why some skiers seem to think that uniquely among air travelers their luggage should be carried for free or at lower rates than anyone else.

depends what you get, skis weigh upwards of 3kg a pair while bindings are upwards of 2kg a pair. In fact, 3kg is a pretty light pair of skis, way lighter than most recreational skiers could manage so it's really more like 4kg or more.

.. and yes, you're right... that means 6kg for a pair of skis with bindings and poles in a bag can't possibly work )

However, good news on the insurance, they don't care what the airline regulations are :lol: if your ski bag has two pairs in then that's what you claim.

AllyG wrote:Litteski,
I'm really sorry. That's incredibly annoying. I can't believe that Rail Europe won't take your booking over the phone, just because you don't live in Europe!

in fact I don't believe it for a moment.

I can tell you a country where you can't book rail tickets from abroad easily though, it's the UK ) The various booking sites interchangeably won't accept a foreign credit card or a foreign address, where you can navigate that challenge they'll arrange tickets for collection at the second or third station you pass rather than the one you start your journey at. National Express are quite good though.

I don't think it's quite that simple. It's clearly true if you've got a bad travel agent that you could quite probably do better yourself and there's no doubt it's a rewarding experience to plan trips yourself but it's nothing like that straightforward.

Some people who are planning their own trips certainly do discover places that some arranged tours don't but others are kidding themselves a bit about the level of discovery involved here. If you've sought out and booked a great chalet in a little known village linked to some big ski circuit that's fantastic and I'm not knocking it for a moment. But, you shouldn't underestimate what specialists can achieve, I go places most people have never heard of and that large tour operators could never operate in which is great but not everyone wants that.

There's no clear answer if it's cheaper or not planning it yourself but as an individual you're going to struggle to compete with the prices even I get let alone what the bulk purchasing of some of the tour operators can achieve.

Some travel agents aren't very good and some tour operators only operate in a small number of places, it doesn't mean all travel agents are hopeless or that all tour operators can't arrange a good trip.

Clearly I don't mean this site and I'm not going to promote the other site any further by linking to it.

I wouldn't share their optimism that people with iPhones are going to make this better not worse though :D You see some howlingly inaccurate reports if you read around.

I'd think the ski stations quoted in the article have it about right, there's little incentive for them to exaggerate repeatedly, as economists the two guys ought to have explained what incentives they thought existed to repeatedly over-estimate snow. It's presumably a longer paper so I would imagine they must have done that.

I can't say in Europe I've ever noticed official snow reports being consistently inaccurate, I have noticed snow reports from practically every other source being wrong though. Some years back I was on a ski bus while someone phoned in a snow report, he neither overstated nor understated the snow systematically but it was just the report was wrong in every other detail.

There is a problem that the people writing reports use language, I means terms and phrasing, that mean something specific which is then misunderstood by the average skier; they could try a bit harder there.

You also have to feel for the ski stations, the reports posted for Alpe d'huez on J2SKI recently were a case in point, the official reports were absolutely fantastic, the best I've seen in France if not anywhere in the world and then along came a spamvertising website who scraped the content off and butchered it beyond all recognition. If you're just someone going on holiday I'm not sure how you're supposed to tell the difference unless you can just look at it and know it's wrong, it's not a lot better than than phishing emails really, in fact it's the same in many ways.

Snapzzz wrote:

Really, i would love to see a guide to what works and what doesn't.

that would be useful, I can tell you that definitely my Craft gloves work fine as I use them all the time, I think some of my Mammut, Marmot and Black Diamond ones do as well. It might be some of the materials used in mountaineering and nordic gear just works though.