J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by AllyG

The buses go according to the time-table, and you have to make sure before you buy your flights that their times will fit in with the bus time-table, and the bus only goes on saturday (2 bus times this season) and Sunday (only one bus this season to Verona but 2 to Bergamo).

It's a bus service run by the Tourist board, to attract visitors to the area. The two guys in our group who used the bus had no problems with it - in fact they said it got to Folgarida much quicker than on the time-table as there weren't many people on the bus so I suppose they missed out a few of the stops.

A private taxi costs the earth if there are only 1 or 2 of you.

I think that's pretty expensive myself, plus you still have to drive there. I'd much rather go on the train from London and then get the bus to the resort (around a half hour bus journey or something like that for about 15 euros return).

We went to Zell am See for a family ski holiday about 10 years ago and it was ideal for us - but we were all beginners or lower intermediates. And we went to Kaprun for a day to see what the ski-ing was like over there.

I think you might get rather bored if you just stayed in the Zell am See area itself - but it's not far to Kaprun on the bus.

Hi Trotski,
There's a public bus to Passo Tonale between there and Verona and Milan Bergamo airports:

http://www.flyskishuttle.com/start.php?page=home&lang=EN

2 of the people in our group got to Folgarida using this bus from Bergamo, and it's very cheap. I think it was 35 euros return between Bergamo and Folgarida. Passo Tonale is just the other side of one of the Madonna di Campiglio mountains.

This was our second annual J2Ski group trip. We have already started planning our next one. Admin doesn't organize it - we do it ourselves. At the moment areas under consideration are La Thuile, the Sella Ronda, and Leogang for Saalbach. But we have a lot of research to do yet before we make up our minds about where to go next year!

The way we do it is we decide where to go and sort out some suitable accommodation, and then each of us chooses how we get there. So we had 3 cars, 11 people on the same EasyJet flight from Gatwick to Verona followed by a mini-bus taxi to Folgarida (which only cost 64 euros return), one person (me) on the train from Verona after a BA flight, and one person on the train from Milan Malpensa airport after a flight from the U.S., and 2 on the public shuttle bus from Milan Bergamo after a RyanAir flight from Stansted.

There's an account of our trip, with photos, here:
http://www.j2ski.com/ski-chat-forum/posts/list/592/12565.page

Hi Trotski,
We were just the other side of the mountain from you, in Folgarida/Madonna di Campiglio for the J2Ski 2014 group holiday, and we experienced fog and low cloud and heavy snow, as well (although it didn't stop us ski-ing!).

I'm sure those incredible snow depths weren't normal, and I expect there was more fog around than usual. We really liked our resort - what did you think of Passo Tonale? We could have gone there on our lift pass but it would have meant about an hour in a bus, each way, so we didn't bother.

Here's a photo of Billip1's daughter, on the blue home run - piste number 2.
She hurt her knee ski-ing, and the medical centre in Folgarida checked it over for her and told her it was nothing too serious but to put a knee brace on it and not to ski for the rest of the holiday. So that's why she's not in our lovely group photos on the last day :(
(Photo Billip1)

The pistes were much longer than I was expecting, after reading up on how long they were, because one piste generally runs seamlessly into another. So that, for example, ski-ing down from Monte Vigo to Marilleva 1400 there's a total run of 4.7 Km, made up of the red pistes 11 and 23. And going back up, it's split into a gondola from the bottom followed by a chairlift, so that you don't have to ski all the way down if you don't want to.

Davidsa2 had one of those apps on his phone that tell you how far you've skied and how fast. And according to this we averaged around 25 miles of actual ski-ing per day, which I'm sure is nowhere near as much as we did in Tignes, but that was because of the poor visibility, the powdery lumps, and the other less experienced skiers on the pistes. We got pretty good at avoiding other skiers/boarders and casualties. I found there were fairly long stretches with few people on them and then we'd get to a ridge and I'd bang the brakes on and peer anxiously over the top and there was usually about 30 people crowded closely together struggling with powdery lumps.

I didn't ski into anyone all week (in fact I never have skied into anyone) but I got hit twice from behind by other people. Once by a boarder who's board collided with my skis and knocked me over, and once by a skier who whacked me on the back but didn't actually knock me over.

There were very few pistes and occasions when it was safe to take the brakes off and really 'go' for it. We managed it a couple of times first thing in the morning on the freshly pisted red Brenzi piste, and a few more times over in Pinzolo. Davidsa2 logged a speed of 45 mph (and I was going faster than him!) :)

There are about 20 mountain restaurants in the ski area of Folgarida and Madonna di Campiglio, and I should think I went into about half of them during the week.

The poshest one I found is the chalet Fiat at the top of Monte Spinale. I did wonder, when I first walked in, if I was in the right place, it was so posh! And it has one restaurant area that's laid out as though it's for a wedding - presumably that's for people who reserve a place there.

The mountain restaurants seemed to have a self-service section, which is just like anywhere else where you go and fill your tray up and then pay. But they also had a separate area where you said what you wanted and paid at the till and they gave you a voucher and then you went and got your tea and cake or whatever - I generally did it like this because I reckoned it was quicker.

They all seemed very new, and the toilets were miles better than the ones I've seen in France - and you certainly didn't have to pay to go to the toilet! The only fault I had with them was that sometimes there was a queue in the ladies, so maybe they need more cubicles.

So, I was very impressed with the mountain restaurants. The food was great, it was very reasonably priced, the service was good, and as long as we weren't there at the main lunchtime at around 1 p.m. the queues weren't too bad and we could usually find somewhere to sit together. There was usually a very good view from them as well (when it wasn't foggy or snowing hard, that is!).

And we never had to look at the piste map to search for the nearest restaurant. They always just turned up in front of us, because there are so many of them :)