Before I go skiing I always check out Snow Forecast. It is a fairly cludgy site, but so useful, with a free six day forecast available for every resort in Switzerland (and elsewhere) and bags of additional info. Really useful site. Here is an example of the information available (updated in real time, so this is what it is really like!):
Chateau d’Oex in the Pays-d’Enhaut is the most Easterly French-speaking winter sports resort in Switzerland. It is denoted Sector 3 of the huge but largely unconnected Gstaad Mountain Rides network, most of which is in Saanerland in the Bernese Oberland. It is one of the few valley stations in the circuit that is easy to reach by public transport (Zweisimmen being the easiest) but is also fairly easy to reach by car from Berne, via Bulle and Gruyeres. Indeed, Gstaad Mountain Rides is probably the only winter sports area in Switzerland where a car is a good option – for those flying in by private jet to Gstaad airport there is a good Range Rover rental company nearby!
Chateau D’Oex is most famous for its thermals and balloon festival in January, and once was a favourite ski resort with the Brits, but probably fell out of favour because of it’s height – the top station at La Braye is only 1630m. There are a number of quibbles you can have with the resort as well as it’s altitude. No valley run except to nearby Gérignoz, the awful t-bar from Bois-Chenau which you need to take up from the Gérignoz chairlift to get back to La Braye, old equipment, a modest vertical, only one mountain restaurant…
Chateaus d'Oex
But on the bright side, it’s a lovely, friendly resort with 40km of pistes for all abilities and it is usually totally uncrowded at weekends. After the frequently-run valley cable car gets you up the mountain you can rely upon the efficient covered two-person chairlift to give you access to virtually all the terrain, including blue, red and black runs and some off-piste and a fun park. The runs are mostly North-facing and through the trees and are generally wide, well-groomed and easier than their designation. The restaurant at La Braye is good and (like everyone here) very friendly, and also doubles up as a ski-in, ski-out b&b at a respectable CHF25 for adults (less or free for kids; half-board is also available). The ski school seems good and English is widely spoken at the ski school, restaurant and lift office. The lift pass in 2010/11 is CHF42 for an adult for a full day, much cheaper than the main Gstaad area, sector 1.
Landlocked within the landlocked nations of Switzerland and Austria, Liechtenstein hosts one tiny ski resort, Malbun. It is a spectacular drive from the motorway at Sargans in Switzerland, or about 30 minutes by bus from Valbun, Liechtenstein’s capital (itself 30 minutes by bus from Sargans station).
The resort has just over 20km piste and stands at about 1600m. The highest runs are from 2000m with three modern chairlifts servicing virtually all of the resort. There is a good range of skiing from nursery slopes through runs of increasing difficulty, including one short, steep black and some off-piste. There’s cross-country skiing in nearby Steg and toboggan runs and winter walking trails in Malbun itself.
On the face of it, there would be little to attract skiers and snowboarders to Malbun but it is uncrowded and friendly, and in the Hotel Gorfion has an excellent ski-in, ski-out family hotel where you can deposit your kids in the ski school opposite or leave them in the hotel’s supervised nursery from as early as 7am until 8pm (schedule varies).
swissinfo.ch reports that Google Street View is moving onto the European ski pistes, with Zermatt chosen as the first European outing for its special snowmobile.
Apparently over 30,000 winter sport enthusiasts took part in a competition launched jointly with Switzerland Tourism at the beginning of February, to select which Swiss resort should be featured.
Google first included the Canadian resort of Whistler Mountain alongside the 2010 Winter Olympics.
