J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by msej449

+1 for a transfer via the excellent Swiss rail system. Crans is a very accessible resort by public transport. And the train journey is very pleasant and quite scenic. If travelling on a busy Saturday, the A9 autoroute can be very congested and the train would be much more relaxed.

This is just a re-work of a string of 'Satellite' ski area articles in The Guardian and Mail. So rather than link to a pay-per-view/register-'for free'-then-find-yourself-on-a-dozen-email-lists-and-hounded-to-subscribe page, take a look at the originals which also have the merit of being open access:

https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2014/dec/06/satellite-ski-resorts-verbier-four-valleys-switzerland

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/article-2296527/How-Verbier-cheap--stay-little-sister-La-Tzoumaz.html[/url]

https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2007/oct/28/skiing.france

This is a pretty old theme (oldest above is 2007) and I'd be surprised if people searching for property didn't now know that a lot of famous areas have 'satellites' where the £/m2 is much lower.

The major UK estate agents like Savills (quoted in the Telegraph) and Knight Frank regularly publish what are pretty biased 'Reviews' of the alpine market, concluding - surprise, surprise - that it's a great investment. Especially in locations where they have offices or links to local agents :-)

For an unbiased analysis of Alpine property trends, I don't think you can beat the UBS Alpine Property Focus 2018, which is based on about 30 more sources than the agency ones, including public records of sales:

https://www.ubs.com/global/en/wealth-management/chief-investment-office/our-research/life-goals/2018/alpine-property-focus/_jcr_content/mainpar/toplevelgrid_1920643628/col1/innergrid/xcol1/teaser_746641050/linklist/actionbutton.0269083380.file/bGluay9wYXRoPS9jb250ZW50L2RhbS9hc3NldHMvd20vZ2xvYmFsL2Npby9kb2MvdWJzLWFscGluZS1wcm9wZXJ0aWVzLXVzLnBkZg==/ubs-alpine-properties-us.pdf

There's also a more readable discussion article by UBS analysts at

https://www.ubs.com/global/en/wealth-management/chief-investment-office/our-research/life-goals/2018/alpine-property-focus.html

I appreciate that you're hiring some distance from the skiing, so winter tyres are probably no on the menu for a cheap rental. That's probably why the rate is cheap - because the assumption is you'll only be driving in the town or surrounding coastal area. You should cancel/amend the booking, looking to hire a car with winter tyres for definite, and highly desirable to have chains too. I know, this is easy for me to say and I appreciate this isn't what you'll want to hear. Trouble is, what happens when you hit conditions like this

https://i.imgur.com/MXE8EyO.mp4

which are not suitable for chains and need winter tyres? I'm in our own car on winter tyres and we managed fine, even when the snowplough forced me to plant the right wheels deep into the snow piling-up against the barrier. Summer tyres would have been lethal and chains won't work in this sort of alternating snow/slush/tarmac surface.

Where we are, the Lift company runs its own drone service provided by a local subcontractor who has industrial-grade octa-copter equipment, an assistant and a ton of batteries. They sit at the Funpark and video for free on Weekends and you can hire them for your own use if you want to pay for longer sessions. Thay also cover the main competitions, both freeride and FIS - This is to discourage people from using their own. In practical terms, the thinner air at altitude means the effective flight time is dramatically reduced, so photography time is very limited before you need to land and change batteries. In Switzerland you need 3-party insurance cover for anything heavier. I have a Parrot and once you add all this up, it's not worth the hassle for what's effectively a 5-minute flight capability. Elsewhere, as mentioned, they're completely prohibited.

Hoever, if you're a semi-pro with a good track-record of responsible flying, i wonder if there might be mileage in your contacting the lift company in your intended destination and asking them? Perhaps with the offer of being the 'official' partner? That way, you might pick up some business and it'd all be with their approval, and you wouldn't risk antagonising any local freelancers already offering this,

Most apartment owners and their agents are happy to take a month's rental. Usually, the decision is over what sort of discount to give, as 4 guaranteed weeks is attractive. You certainly don't want to be paying 4x the standard weekly rate.

If I were you, I'd just choose a preferred resort or area, and then contact some of the Agencies with the spec' of what you want (no. bedrooms, nearness to lifts, underground parking, central hot water - whatever your preferences). Alternatively, in our village, the Tourist Office is very good and would do the research for you (although not all TOs are as efficient).

The big upside of your own apartment is that you have the personal space to relax. Even if money was no object, I'm not sure I'd want to stay in a hotel for a month anyway. Driving down, you'd be able to bring a lot of what you'd need and just shop locally for perishables. For longer periods, I'm sure you'd want to take a break and go to a local market one day, do a museum/culture or visit a spa, depending on what your preferences are.

SUFFIX: Make sure they have good broadband, preferably wired (at least to the WiFi router). For that length of time you're going to want good access to streaming audio and video, I would have thought. And not just a 2Mbps microwave line shared by 20 apartments.

I'm sympathetic to the OP. "Tough Love" is not a helpful suggestion. There's no way you can know the mental and physical state of the person in question. Going down in a chair is always do-able but understandably not something operators want to do regularly. I've accompanied a friend down a long series of chairs in Flaine after he got a minor allergic reaction to the cold/altitude. The operators were happy to do this as an alternative to a body-bag trip down. Personally, if I was supervising someone who simply felt they couldn't make it down, I'd tell the operator they felt very unwell and needed to get down via chair or bag - and I'm betting they'd happily organise them to use the chair. And then I'd re-adjust the lifts and slopes they were using subsequently so yes, they'd be able to better handle the situation. My wife had a bad fall and could have been killed because the idiot 'leader' of our group took the "Tough Love" approach to 'helping' her learn to ski and sent her down a slope she was completely unsuited to because of his philosophy of 'challenging' people to do what they felt they couldn't. It's completely irresponsible to send someone down a slope if they say they aren't able to handle it. For me, there's a primary rule to Alpine skiing - if someone in a group says they can't do it then only they can make that call and they can't do it. It's not a lack of moral fibre, as some people seem to think.

I've skied Vail and a couple of 1-Day excursions in the same area. And a number of times to Heavenly Lake Tahoe. All these were on the back of a business trip. For Vail, my wife few out to Denver from the UK and we both flew back.

The big ticket items were equipment hire and ski pass. Eating, you could moderate the cost especially for children's meals. Car hire from Denver was reasonable (albeit I used a corporate discount from my company - but be sure to get the right cover).

Vail was the most expensive skiing per head (and that includes a hotel in Verbier New Year Week!). It was worth the money, but I think I'd probably give Canada a go rather than return to Vail or Tahoe. I liked that Vail was right beside the Freeway so although it's further than some other resprts, there's no driving up on narrow roads up mountain valleys. We hired a self-catering apartment which may have cost as much as a hotel package, but it gave us space to relax and we could eat in sometimes. I'd say that you can spend a lot in many US resorts, but conversely, they also seem to cater for families and those on a budget as well. So rather like Switzerland, you need to keep an eye on prices before you sit down to eat.

My wife was badly jetlagged for 2-3 days. It's not just the flight and timeshift, but you arrive late afternoon then have immigration, hire car pickup, and then the drive up into the mountains. So it's tiring for an adult, let alone kids. So I wouldn't go for just a week.

That said, the terrain in Vail is very different to Europe - sort of 'wide open' with uncrowded, wide pistes and lifts. And although a bit souless, on-piste food is done well by the Americans: yes, it's busy but not chaotic at lunchtimes and the prices were reasonable with plenty of stuff for the kids. In many ways, I'd say Vail would be good for a very mixed group as there's plenty to choose from. I don't think you'd be disappointed, but you might feel that it had been a pricey trip per head.

I've suggested on a previous thread that an alternative would be a family holiday to San Francisco and then skiing in Heavenly. The SFR bit on the front would allow everyone to de-jetlag and relax, and then you could drive to Tahoe on a quieter weekday, leaving 9-10am rather than the usual 4-5pm if you fly in from the UK.

@Nurick - Yes, this is definitely a good point. If you are likely to use a car anyway to try other resorts, then looking in the valley or even countryside nearby is an option. You could turn this on it's head, so to speak i.e. are there locations which would be great in summer, but still near to one or more big ski areas in winter? There's also the in-between that increasingly, ski resorts are trying to develop summer holiday business, some more successfully than others. So if you like mountain-biking, hiking, horse riding etc. then research the summer activities to see how long the season is and what goes on, especially when they open the lifts.