J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by Wanderer

For those of you who can't wait, I got an email from this crowd

http://www.stantonchalets.co.uk/

offering a catered chalet in St Anton for Christmas week for £369, incl. flights (ex. UK) and transfers. This was down from £799 or something like that

As others have pointed out, Val D'Isere is expensive as are most French ski resorts. However, some of the figures quoted are clearly exceptional and would apply to the most expensive places in town. Its like saying that prices in the Shelbourne Hotel (in Dublin) or the Savoy (in London) are what you should generally expect as normal in either city.

In my experience, you can eat and drink, not cheaply, but reasonably if you look around. A couple of tips:

- look for menu du jour in the restaurants - these are usually good quality and good value;

- as somebody has suggested, keep an eye out for happy hours but beware of rising prices after happy hour while you should aim to survive on just 1 drink if you venture into the nightclubs (where prices of €10 a drink or more are likely). Apart from the up-market spots/nightclubs, you should be able to get a pint of beer for €6 max in most bars or less during happy hour;

- do not order a bottle of water with lunch - there is absolutely no need and you will rarely see the French do it. Just ask for a carafe d'eau like the locals and get a nice big bottle of lovely cold tap water for free. It really galls me to pay €3 for a small bottle of water.

- watch out for coffee/hot chocolates: I love a coffee after my lunch but it can be a bit much to pay €4 a pop, even if it is very good :shock:

Anyway, best of luck and enjoy yourself. I am very jealous of you getting two weeks on the slopes this early in the season :lol:

One thing that has not yet been mentioned by the others is fitness. Your first time skiing can be extremely demanding physically. It really helps enjoy the experience if you are reasonably fit before you go. So unless you already have a healthy regime of physical activity, I would ge started now and try to build up your stamina. Anything will help but cycling is excellent as is a bit of hill walking.

Regarding your child and lessons. While she will probably be put into a different class from you, she will be with a bunch of other kids, probably most of them from UK/Ireland so she will make a bunch of new friends by lunchtime on the first day.

Good luck and welcome to the sport.

I've been to Soll for long weekends for the past 2 years and would rate it highly. There is an extensive ski area and links are reasonably ok, though the piste map can take a while to get used to. While many of the runs are quite short, there is a great variety of terrain available. I have rarely encountered any particularly long queues or found lift system perfectly adequate.

The apres ski can be quite lively. The pub at the bottom of the slopes is usually heaving with loud Austrian/German music - great fun and, in my experience usually frequented by Germans. In the village, there are a number of nice bars many of which have live music - usually old MOR stuff - perfect for a group like yours :lol:

Downsides: the village is about 1km from the lifts and I think the bus service is not as regular as it should be. It is well worth considering using one of the ski lockers near the lifts so that you can leave your skis and boots there and then you can walk to and from the lifts in comfort (think of it as part of your warm-up, warm-down routine). Snow cover can be a bit hit and miss but there will usually be enough to cover the main runs. The run to the resort can be a bit of a nightmare - chronically icy or slushy depending on conditions :evil:. Unless conditions are pretty good, its hardly worth doing and its often better to take the gondola down.

I think the comment about tour ops and chavs is a bit overdone and/or out of date. While there are certainly a few Brits around, it is not much different that pretty much any other resort in the alps and it probably less noticeable that in some of the French resorts like Meribel.

Overall, I think its a decent resort. However, my experience is based on long weekends. It might become a little boring for big mileage skiers.

Used it to check out our mileage in Soll in March. Quite interesting to get accurate figures on what you have done. Obviously, it cannot take account of difficulty or other conditions that can mean you did a lot of skiing but low mileage.

Some of the league tables look as it they might be dodgey. The top distance for Soll seemed to be based on repeating a single run from before official lift opening until closure with little or no breaks. Made me wonder if a member of staff might have simply run a card through the turnstiles every few minutes :twisted:.

Hi Yaniv

Unfortunately, that late in the season, the Arlberg is probably the only place you would reasonably be sure of resorts being open/having snow, e.g. St Anton, Lech, etc. However, these are a very long way from Vienna :cry:. The only other thing I could suggest is to check out resorts with glaciers, such as the Hintertux or Kaprun. They may keep going a bit longer than the others and offer some skiing. I think these are still quite a trek from Vienna.

Despite it being an amazing year for snow, most of the lower resorts will keep going until Easter at best and will then close the lifts, even if there is plenty of snow cover. The problem for them is that they normally would not have snow and therefore have no bookings and not enough custom to justify the expense of keeping the resort open :cry: While I am not an expert, I think this would include virtually any resorts within easy reach of Vienna.

I love watching the downhill from Kitz every year and this has often made me think about going there. However, from reading various reviews of the resort, I would have some concerns about the extent of the skiing relative to the size of the village and also the reliability of the snow. From what I gather, you can end up with very busy slopes and pretty poor snow conditions :x. But I guess thats the chance you take with every trip.

Another option you might consider is staying somewhere lift Westendorf or Soll. The skiwelt area is huge with lots of variety and is now connected to Kitz so it would be possible to ski over there on one or two days (not sure how long it takes to get across though).

While perhaps not actually meeting the term "quaint", the "scare chair" in Aple D'heuz is pretty interesting. Instead of bringing you up, the chair drops over the edge of a cliff and drops down about 500m before climbing up the other side of the valley. Its a pretty unusual experience and not for anybody with any fear of heights :wink: