J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by LOTA

Rocksy

Glad you've found something suitable. In your original post, you mentioned skipping ski school and possibly having a lesson or two.
Can I urge you to have some instruction at some point during your holiday.
Bad habits, that can dog the rest of your skiing career, are so easy to acquire. If you aspire to ski anything and everything in style and safety, a solid basic technique is a must. Even after nearly 40 years skiing, I still try to have at least one private lesson a trip. It really does make a difference.

Very interested! Keep me posted....

The advantage for me in DIY is that I can't always do a traditional Saturday to Saturday or Sunday to Sunday trip. DIY gives me the flexibility to go early on Sunday and come home late on a Friday - or Wednesday to Wednesday. With a few exceptions, tour ops are only able to do this with Swiss holidays.

Not sure if it works out cheaper - the biggest bugbear is the transfer to and from the airport.

As for airlines, Swiss fly to Geneva and Zurich several times a day, and this opens up France and western Austria as well as Switzerland. They also carry your skis for nothing!

Accommodation is the easiest bit - use sites like this and the resort websites - they carry a range of hotels, guest houses, apartments etc that never appear in any tour ops' brochure. Always a good idea to have a glance at Trip Advisor to pick up on any themes, good and bad!

Tips, that I can remember, from the Telegraph article included travelling in ski clothes and taking boots as hand luggage. I think I still have it somewhere so will try to dig it out!

Swiss Travel Service used to do a day trip at weekends. It went something like 0600 Swiss flight from Heathrow to Zurich (80 minutes), car to Engelberg (90 minutes), ski all day, leave about 4.30pm, 8.15pm flight back to Heathrow.

There was a feature on it the Daily Telegraph and it might be worth contacting the Swiss Travel Centre in London who used to advertise it.

PS - Always fancied doing it, so I'm in if you need an extra body to help keep down the costs! )

What a shame, Tony H, that your scheme didn't even reach the first hurdle.

It seems that transfers from the airport to resort are the biggest bugbear and source of questions and discussions on this forum. Apart from Switzerland, where you have the railway option, it seems we're in the hands of a few operators who are almost licensed to print money!

That's easy!

Burt was a plate binding that had a platform and cables that came off the ski in a fall, rather than separate heel and toe pieces that remain fixed to the ski.

Look, I believe, did something similar in Europe. I recall that at the dry ski slope where I worked in the late 70s/early 80s, we had a number of pairs of skis fitted with these plate bindings. They appeared to work ok, but were a bit fiddly to reattach!

Dave Mac wrote:Aaah, drool, rear entry, single clip, and that photo, imagine what the occupants were up to......

It wasn't so much the 'rear entry, single clip' that made them stand out - it was the fact they were knee high. I read an unwarranted fear of knee injuries killed them off commercially.