J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by dobby

Be good to hear how you get on with it. Must admit I have never considered a visor helmet. Suppose the main advantage is that you don't have to worry about your mask fitting properly with a particular (standard) helmet and you can wear glasses underneath without having to worry about masks fitting over your glasses.

Marie, it makes a lovely change to read a positive trip report for a holiday when there's not much snow about. Most trip reports I've read on other websites for the week you went were quite negative. I'm glad that you liked Niederau - it's on my list of places to ski (largely due to Dave Mac's enthusiasm for the place). Glad to hear that your daughter liked it - my daughter is also 14, and is now a dare-devil nutcase who can out-ski mum and dad by miles. She still has no idea where she's going, bless her. And I can still make T-bar lifts, erm, interesting for her. Tee hee. I usually post a report on my trips, so I'll make sure I do that after my trip to Norway in February (I'll have to take a bottle of rum or two or possibly three in my luggage - don't fancy paying Norwegian prices).

Obvious comment, but avoid school holidays if you can to reduce costs. Leaving it relatively late in the season (to get reasonably good weather) and booking late (to pick a resort with good snow) would be my call. I would seriously think about childcare for at least half a day per day so that you can have a ski and so daughter can pick up a bit of age-appropriate tuition.I know that ESF in France runs ski school for kids of her age (piou piou or something like that). This involves skiing, watching videos and larking about in the snow. I cannot comment on other countries 'cosI have only used ESF for little kids. Mind you, once the kids are 5 or so and in proper ski school, ESF gets a bit tougher (kids have to MTFU, as my mate would say).

Sound advice by VSB. Correlates with reports of conditions on other fora.

Hemsedal opening more runs on 28 November - v good snow coverage by look of it and probably expecting quite a few local skiers.

I'd heard that temps dropping in Austria over the next week or so, so good for man made stuff if no real stuff is falling. LDA supposed to be opening on Saturday. Not much snow at all down low, as far as I can see from the webcams, but probably plenty at 2600m plus. Like Jonesmski, I have been checking Crystal out - very little on offer for 06 and 13 December - wonder if they are reducing availability - must admit I don't know how TOs allocate their resources early in the season

Hemsedal opening Friday, 28 November with very few runs open. Looks like a reasonable covering of snow, but only opening 3km of piste (effectively one long run from the top of one of the peaks)

Please can someone sign me up? Dobby off to Hemsedal on 15 Feb.. More fun in the land of the ice and snow.....