I never go on any trip without doing a fair bit of research. Having in the past been forced to get up in the freezing cold at 3am to catch a bus taking three-and-a-half hours to get from a ski resort in eastern Switzerland to Geneva Airport for a 9:30am departure to Edinburgh, nowadays I always pay attention to transfer lengths and flight times. Of course, sometimes these can change in between booking a ski holiday and actual departure, especially if you book early (when discounts are sometimes available).
For our recent ski trip to Saalbach, the flight departure times in both directions were quite reasonable, and the transfer time from Salzburg was two hours. Austrian ski resorts usually have short transfer times. Even so, we always seem to be the last to be dropped off in the resort, and the first to be collected on the way home.
Another thing I look for is the existence of a blue run back into the chosen resort. If you’re not a great skier, you’ve been skiing all day and the legs are burning, the last thing you want is a tricky, icy red between you and the sauna at the end of the day.
Saalbach has numerous blue runs, though someone we spoke to reckoned that Saalbach Skicircus blues were the equivalent of easier reds in other resorts. I’d agree with that.
I may not be a great skier, but I still like an extensive ski area. The Skicircus has seventy lifts and enough kms of piste to keep anyone happy (something like 200kms).
Snow availability is always at the back of my mind, but we’ve always been lucky in this respect. A long, long time ago we went to La Molina, in Spain – it’s not a place that is in most brochures nowadays. There had been no snow at all lower down, but on the night before we went there, it received half a metre and we could ski to the door!
Over the years we’ve stayed in hotels, chalets, chalet hotels and self catering apartments. They have all been good, though the hotels we stayed in, in Grindelwald and Arabba, and the chalet hotel in St. Christoph, were outstanding.
I hope you enjoy this short video of our recent trip to Saalbach. It includes a performance by an Elvis tribute act at our hotel!
A few weeks ago my elder son Jamie, who is living and working in Addis Ababa, told me that he was going to a meeting in Geneva in January, and he fancied a couple of days skiing whilst in Switzerland. So, we quickly thought it might be possible to meet up with him on the slopes, and I started investigating the options.
The main problem was the lack of snow. There had been a big dump in the Alps in November, but nothing since, so that meant that Morzine, which is close to Geneva but not high altitude, wasn’t really an option. Verbier is very expensive. I finally settled on Chamonix, which is not too far from Geneva and has some high up slopes, and it was possible for Jamie to get a bus transfer to the resort mid-week while the rest of us booked a full week with Inghams. We ended up staying at the Rocky Pop Hotel in Les Houches, down the valley from Chamonix itself. Two days before we travelled there was a big fall of snow! The weather forecast for our week was for lots of mist, but in the event every day was lovely and sunny, but cold – down to minus 25 one day.
The skiing was wonderful. Most days we went to a different place: Les Houches on Sunday, Domaine Brévent-Flégère on Monday, Domaine des Grands Montets on Tuesday, back to Les Houches for a half day on Wednesday when Jamie arrived at the hotel, over to Courmayeur in Italy on Thursday, and finally Domaine de Balme on Friday. Each resort has its own characteristics and challenges. I’m not up to doing black runs, but the reds and blues were very good in each place.
Below is the seven minute video of our stay, showing slides and clips from each resort plus the interior of the Rocky Pop. I’m not a good skier, and had no GoPro, so most of the clips are of pretty flat runs.
This is the place where we stayed, in St Christoph. It’s a chalet hotel, so it’s not a chalet, and it’s not a hotel. But to me it was more like a hotel than a chalet.
There were about 150 Brits staying there, and a couple of Americans. Most folk were in their fifties or sixties. Fat Mac reckons that it’s mainly Hooray Henries who go skiing, but as usual he’s thinking about what it was like in the sivinties. Nowadays, it’s mostly either young ravers or oldies. The ravers stay in places like St Anton, get rat-arsed in the evenings at places like the Krazy Kanguruh and BaseCamp, sleep it off the next day and get on the piste by the pm. The oldies, on the other hand, get up early and have fresh pistes often to themselves. Oldies enjoy places such as the Sporthotel because you can ski in/ski out, and it’s a lot quieter, though having said that, the free wine on offer did raise the noise level somewhat in the evenings.
Most of the people staying at the Sporthotel were professionals of one kind or another, and many had retired. Amongst others, we met three retired doctors, an NHS manager, and a retired teacher. In most cases, the couples both had, or had had, professional level jobs. They were nearly all very good skiers, much better than us, and seemed to go on at least one skiing holiday each year. They were all physically fit – none were obese – in fact, skiing keeps you very fit, and you also have to be fit to ski well. I read the other day that by 2020, 40% of Scottish people will be obese, so I don’t think many of those folk will ski much.
Virtually all of the staff in the chalet hotel were from Britain. It seems that in the UK there are numerous Polish, Portuguese and other foreign nationals who work in the hotels, whilst the Brits go abroad for employment in such services. No doubt they enjoy the skiing on their days off.
Some thought had gone into the dining arrangements. There were various groups who sat at their own tables for most of the week. Then there were a few couples who wanted to sit by themselves. The rest of us were invited to sit in rows of tables seating 10 people. At the entrance to the dining room, you were directed to a specific table, which sometimes varied. Lindsey and I spent our meals either on tables 5 or 6. This meant that our neighbours varied a bit, but that somewhere on each table, each evening, were some people we’d sat beside on previous evenings. This was a good arrangement.
The tables filled up depending on who arrived in the dining room after the aperitif in the large bar area. So, if you were first to your table, you had your choice of seat. If you were last, you sat in the vacant slots. Not every couple was male/female.
The setup worked well. Imagine if the seating arrangements were fixed, and you had to sit at the same seat, every evening, for example at the end of a row of five double tables, and you’d pulled the short straw and every evening the only neighbour you could talk to was Fat Mac. Well – by the second evening you’d want to go home. Imagine having to listen to talk, every night for two hours, about how the UK needs a Stalin figure who would make sure that hard-working people like yourself, who had maybe been in employment for thirty to thirty-five years or more, should be lined up and shot, and their assets given to the bone-idle! And imagine looking over to your only neighbour during the third course, and, what with the free wine and all, what you’d see would be Fat Mac drooling into his creme brûlée! Imagine the horrors. Thank goodness Fat Mac doesn’t ski!
That sort of thing couldn’t happen at the Sporthotel because, as I said, the seating arrangements varied. If you sat in the middle of the table one evening, you could talk to couples on either side of you. But, in fact, your neighbours on either side would spend much of their time talking to the people at the table ends, otherwise those people would only have themselves to talk to. Everyone was in a great mood each evening, as they’d all had a fantastic day on the snow – apart from the woman who was taken out by a boarder on the first day, and suffered a broken leg.
There was only one ski snob – a chap who “didn’t do ski buses”. Mind you, the ski buses, unlike the post buses, were extremely crowded, so maybe he had a point.
Crowded ski bus
The only Hooray Henries we saw were actually Henriettas. They had a table at the Hospiz Alm, the top place at St Christoph. They were drinking expensive wine, and had a row of empties beside their table. We checked out the prices, and figured out that they’d run up an afternoon tab of £500. Nixon, Kennedy, and various royals had eaten at the Hospiz Alm. We could tell this from the photos near the entrance.
The Hospiz Alm has a great way (a slide) of getting to the toilets downstairs when you have boots on.
The most enjoyable day was skiing over to Stuben early in the morning, catching the crowded ski bus to Lech, going up the gondola to Rüfikopf at 2362 metres, and then skiing down the long, fairly quiet blue 38, eventually reaching Zürs by the blue 3.
Things didn’t look particularly good for our skiing holiday in St Christoph, Austria.
The weather forecast wasn’t great for the week that we’d booked, and when we arrived at our chalet hotel it was very misty. Skiing is a bit like having a bipolar experience. The first morning you put on layer after layer of clothing – thick socks, thermal top and bottom, T-shirt, warm top, salopettes, jacket, scarf, gloves, etc, and by the time you’ve struggled into your boots, climbed the stairs clutching your skis and poles, put on your helmet and goggles, connected your boots to the skis and walked over to the first tow, you feel so exhausted and clumpy that you can’t imagine actually doing much else for the rest of the day.
Then you get to the top of the first T-bar, look over and see some blue sky coming in, and it’s whoosh downhill for the best fun you can have with clothes on for the rest of the day.
The third trip we made was to the ‘Hidden Valley’, which involved skiing over to Armentarola, and then catching a bus to Paso Falzarego, and then taking the gondola up to Lagazuoi (2,778m).
View from Lagazuoi
View from Lagazuoi
View from Lagazuoi
Scotoni restaurant
Frozen waterfall
It’s a long red, with wonderful views, down to the end of the run at the Capanna Alpina. From there you can get the ‘horselift’ for 2 Euros.
The horselift involves up to about 50 folk holding on to a rope whilst two horses drag you to the road.
It’s quite a way from the road at Armentarola to get back to Arabba, and by the end of the day we were both pretty knackered.
Half way round the Sellaronda is Piz Seteur, where Go Go Girls dance in the afternoon. Something different. We had to get back to Arabba before the lifts closed, so we didn’t linger.