J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by andyhurley

I'm in the process of organising a group of colleages for a trip to Garmisch also in early March. There are currenly 10 of us going and I was thinking of booking a hotel in the centre of town. There was space in the one near the ski jump but we decided the timings of the flights was touch and go for getting there before the private lift closed and with it not actually being on the piste we decided to give it a miss.

There were several hotels in town showing vacancies when I checked though.

Tony_H wrote:Change of plan now, and instead of going 20th March and stopping in Chantmerle, I am going 1st March and stopping in Villeneuve.
A big plus is that we are now flying from Stansted not Manchester (1 hour instead of 2.5) and flying into Turin and not Grenoble (easier transfer and more organised airport).

You'll now be there the same time as us. We fly out to Turin from Stansted on the 26th (evening flight after work) and return on the 2nd (after a full day's skiing). We found a place in Briancon to stay quite close to the lift. I think we are past the worst of the school holidays so hopefully it won't be too crowded. Skis waxed and ready to go.

Let's hope we have excellent weather, a fresh dump would be nice but seems unlikely. Failing that some good sunshine would be great.

I'm looking forward to a nice nighttime drive across the col de Montgenevre.

Have fun!

It's been far too many years since I used to visit PDS every year (5 years on the trot staying in Chatel) so please treat this with a big bag of salt...

If memory serves me right each of the areas (including Morzine/Les Gets) has a good number of runs that (assuming they are all open and not closed due to avelanche risk) should keep you busy, however, with such a vast playground I would have felt seriously restricted by a local pass. There is something special about being able to up and over several ranges and crossing borders that would be lost.

If there is a large dump (happened twice in my years there) then many runs may be closed until late in the day when the avalance cannons have done their worst so the freedom to travel a bit further is invaluable then.

Whatever you choose, have fun!

I would agree with all that has been said. I've been to Cervinia a couple of times in the last few years (was going to go again this year but couldn't get the accommodation - that's another story).

The steps up to the gondola are no big deal, especially as you tend to tackle them only once a day. There are runs down to the resort but they are sometimes closed (both times we were there) so you tend to go up beyond Plan Maison for most of the time and take the gondola down in the afternoon. I don't suppose that will be the case this year though with all the excellent snow...

We found it cold and icy on the Italian side so tended to ski up and over to the Swiss side (Zermatt) but that would depend on the prevailing winds and I don't suppose ice will be a problem this year. The tip here though is to aim to come back to Italy for lunch and vin brulé (much cheaper) and, whatever you do, don't get stuck in Zermatt when the lifts close. It's a 5-6 hour taxi ride back to Cervinia!

Almost forgot. The first time we went there were two beginners in our party. Both booked lessons at Plan Maison, one loved it and one hated it. The latter eventually found the nursery slopes down in the town with the conveyor lifts and had a reasonable time down there on his own but has never been skiing since. The other guy is now a regular with our group and will be joining us for the 4th time this year. I think a lot of it was to do with how well they tolerated the biting winds. As has been mentioned, wrap up warm. It's about the only resort I have really needed a face mask and even then I had frozen sinuses on a few occasions.

Have fun.

I was looking for something in Sestriere but couldn't find any vacancies for a group our size (only 6 of us). A few hotels had 1 or 2 rooms available.

You might have better luck booking for a full week though.

Forgot to mention (is there no edit on these forums?)

When searching for accommodation I suggest you pick a resort (or town) and then just google for hotels etc. I found a number of seachable hotel sites with properties in the ski resorts of N Italy / S France.

Sometimes I just found the name of a hotel and Googled that to find a web site with booking form.

If all else fails, send off blanket emails to all the hotels you can find. This is what my colleague did but just got a string of rejections in varying languages. That's when I decided to step in and widen the net. Cervinia is great (though not huge) but there are other places within 2 hours of Turin. Champoluc is ok (did that last year) but the skiing is fairly limited and there are practically no restaurants willing to serve a large group without a booking, I remember much traipsing round town after dark looking for somewhere to eat!

Funnily enough I am in a similar situation.

I'm going with a group of 6 on Feb 26th for 4 days via Turin. We had planned on Cervinia (we've done that before) but my colleage booking the accommodation left it a bit late and we couldn't find anything available.

In the end I started searching for accommodation myself and just today found (and booked) a hotel in Serre Cevalier (Briancon to be precise). The price was right and, crucially, it was available for our short break. I've never been to Serre Chevalier before though I did do Les Deux Alpes a few years back which is just up the road.

Here's hoping for some great skiing at the end of Feb!

Good luck with your booking. You are after a longer break so might have more options than we did (though Cervinia is a Sunday change over so you will be lucky to get anything there unless you go for last minute vacancies and are prepared to break the group up).