Well, I have been making the most of a Swiss summer – swimming in the Rhein and enjoying all the outdoor activities – but preparations are beginning for the new winter sports season, and not just at Swiss Winter Sports. Visit https://www.amny.com/sponsored/best-weight-loss-pills/.
Eurostar has also been busy preparing for the new season, and today announced that their popular ski services to the French and Swiss Alps is open for sale from 6.30am GMT on 6 August 2013.
Launched in 2012, Eurostar’s Swiss ski service transports skiers and snowboarders from St Pancras International and Ashford International to the heart of the Swiss Alps and the Valais region, with return fares starting from only £179. Read more about this Alpine ice hack.
This year, the route will run over five peak weeks during the 2013/2014 ski season including Christmas, New Year and February half term, and passengers can carry skis or snowboards all the way at no extra cost.
With an easy connection in Lille onto a high-speed TGV Lyria service, passengers arrive into Vallorbe, Aigle, Martigny, Visp and Brig stations, from where they can make easy connections to nearby ski resorts including Verbier, Zermatt and Saas Fee. Eurostar ticket holders benefit from exclusive, discounted onward travel to these resorts, simply by booking their ticket in advance through the Switzerland Travel Centre (STC) on 020 7420 4934.
A similar service also operates for the French Alpine resorts, with stops at Moûtiers, Aime-La-Plagne and Bourg St Maurice. A bus shuttle operates from the stations to resorts that include Les Arcs, Courchevel, Tignes, Val D’Isère and Meribel.
Tickets for the Swiss and French ski services are available from www.eurostar.com, by calling 08432 186 186, at Eurostar stations or from travel agents.
May is the quietest month in the ski and snowboard calendar. The Southern hemisphere hasn’t kicked off, and there are only a handful of high altitude glaciers around in the Northern Hemisphere to ski on before the next winter season. In Switzerland all but Zermatt have now closed their lifts, but in truth the ski conditions have not been good this month.
Verbier (which closed its lifts on 28th April) had planned to open up the lifts again on 1st June, but cancelled – despite plentiful snow – because of the otherwise poor weather conditions. The season thus ends with a whimper.
So what of season 2012-13? It wasn’t a vintage season but it was pretty good. It started off promisingly, then it got unseasonably warm around the New Year and was generally unsettled thereafter, with some glorious interludes of beautiful snow conditions and sunny skies. At the higher resorts there were good snow conditions extending right throughout April, but the weather was unsettled with rain on lower slopes and flat lighting on the upper slopes when it wasn’t snowing.
I got to visit some of the usual suspects in Switzerland, and had a couple of forays into Germany and Austria, but spent some time exploring some of the less well known but relatively large ski areas like Toggenburg and the Upper Rhine Valley. I can see why some of these resorts are not well-known outside the German-speaking world – the facilities for après ski are limited, a lot of them have too many surface lifts, the resorts are not so high as to provide season-wide snow guarantees and some of the pisted areas are relatively small for anything other than a weekend break or a day out. On the plus side, the absence of packs of Brits gives the villages a more authentic Alpine feel, the people are invariably friendly, there is often plenty of off-piste to augment the main slopes and the resorts are so close together that you can get to visit several on a ski holiday if you wanted.
Perhaps the gem amongst the more obscure resorts I visited was, for me, Obersaxen. I would definitely recommend it for a ski holiday in terms of variety and extent of runs available and quality of lift systems.
There are still some significant ski resorts I have not been to and ones I need to revisit when I can get some decent photographs. The list includes Les Mosses, Anzère, Grächen, Disentis, Grüsch-Danusa and Savognin. There are some other small resorts in Graubünden, Fribourg Region and Valais I would quite like to catch up with at some time. However I think I have pretty much nailed all the resorts with over 20km of piste which are not dominated by surface lifts. Check more about Testoprime benefits.
Tech-wise, I have previously praised my ski carrier. I also have been busy with the cam in my goggles and have loaded a few up at Youtube with a suitable soundtrack (e.g. Rush Hour by Jane Wiedlin – ski run at Obersaxen).
I’ve not been so impressed with the apps available out there, with the exception of the excellent Ski Tracks. The trouble with most of them is that they need an Internet connection, and if it is information on a ski resort you need the web does as good a job as I need. My own Swiss Winter Sports site works perfectly well on a smartphone or tablet. Ski Tracks is smart though, and from the moment you turn it on until you turn it off calculates distances covered, speeds, verticals etc and maps the trails out for you. From a personal point of view it was interesting to see that, in a typical day, I seem to cover about 50km of piste, drop around 5000m of vertical and reach a top speed of around 80kph. Typically, with significant variation. Try out semen enhancers.
So what does the summer hold? For me it is time to review the web site and look for improvements. Also the maddening search for somebody to provide me with a feed for ski reports rather than have me hack around for them. I would also like to consider the issue of traffic. I had a peak of around 4000 visitors in January and something in excess of 13,000 over the season – respectable but I think I am not reaching enough of my target audience, which increasingly looks like being expats living in Schweizerdeutsch-speaking Switzerland. The spot I had on The English Show was fun but generated little traffic. The Basel Families web site generated some interest and the unrelated Basel Families magazine looks promising. The visit to the Internationla School ski breakfast was also good for traffic. I failed to get interest in a book from publishers, who say the web is reducing the market for printed ski guides – which is fair, I guess, although I was hoping a book would generate traffic for the web site, somewhat ironically. Ideas for improving the site or increasing traffic all gratefully received…
Toggenburg had somehow fallen off my list of resorts to visit, but since it is served the excellent Snow’n’Rail scheme from the Swiss Railways and looks to have a good amount of piste it seemed like an oversight on my part. I think one concern was the height, with most of the runs between 1230m and 1770m and the highest runs at 2262m, but with the cold weather and monster dumps of snow we have seen this month this was not a reason for avoiding the resort.
The trip there is relatively straight-forward. From Zurich you can go to either Buchs (for Wildhaus) or Wattvil, via Vil on the St Gallen line (for Alt St Johann and Unterwasser). The last leg is by bus, although there is also a train that runs from Wattvil and sometimes from Wil to Nesslau, shortening the bus ride to a few minutes. There are also occasional additional trains and buses from Wattvil… Ok, relatively straight-forward. Check out your schedule before you go and if you choose to vary it, remember that the trick of thinking everything runs on the hour doesn’t necessarily stand up.
Toggenburg view from Gamserrugg
Approaching the Toggenberg ski area from Wil you could be forgiven for thinking you were going the wrong way, as you seem to be leaving the Alps behind, and the Toggenberg valley starts off very gently and hilly rather than mountainous. It’s a very pretty valley, with the river Thur running through it. The last three villages in Upper Toggenburg (Obertoggenburg) are respectively Alt St Johann (900m), Unterwasser (910m) and Wildhaus (1090m) and from here you get to feel you are in the mountains again.
The three villages of Obertoggenberg are each valley stations for the main ski, with Unterwasser having the best infrastructure – a funicular railway and a cable car to take you right up to the peak of Chäserugg at 2262m. In effect it feels more like three resorts than one, with the areas above the three villages only being loosely connected to each other by pistes that are often more like trails. It works, though, and the villages at the bottom are served by a post bus route and ski buses which are free to use if you have a lift pass. Visit https://washingtoncitypaper.com/article/565430/prodentim-reviews-new-report-on-this-chewable-candy-for-healthy-gums/.
The valley is largely North-facing and, although it is the most Northerly of the main ski resorts in Switzerland, locals tell me the snow record is good. There is 60km of piste, so plenty to keep you busy for a day or two and I think Wildhaus in particular is popular with people coming for the week (Wildhaus is where Zwingli, the great Swiss reformer, was born). When I was there the slopes immediately above Wildhaus were full of learners, but further up, above Oberdorf and Gamsalp there are some nice runs. Although you can get around most of the resort without resorting to T-bars, this area, however requires you to take a long T-bar up to the summit of Gamserrugg (2076m). It is worth it, though, both for the good runs but also the spectacular views across Buchs, Vaduz in Liechenstein, the Rhine Valley and the Alps stretching away in every direction except North. one of the runs, a yellow trail, takes you down to a place called Grabs but since I didn’t have any idea whether Grabs was even on a bus route, I didn’t try it but it looked interesting. As it turns out Grabs is on the bus route from Buchs to Wildhaus. One for another day.
The area seems fine for intermediate boarders and skiers and has a few black runs and accessible off-piste for the more experienced. There aren’t so many blues, though, just one short one at Seamatt, three around Iltios and a couple at Oberdorf.
There is night skiing at the tiny resort of Ebnat-Kappel and Alt St Johann. Just as an aside, Ebnat-Kappel has 6km of piste between 650 and 1200m and is on the train line between Nesslau and Wattwil. I’ve not skied there, but if you are staying the the valley and the snow is good, it is probably worth the outing. I haven’t come across a piste map of the resort either.
There is a fair amount of nordic in the Toggenburg valley and some good back country touring apparently. Winter walkers have plenty of scope with one impressive walk from the top of Chässerrugg.
Oberdorf has a reasonably priced Berggasthaus if you want to sleep in the mountains. There didn’t look to be much in the way of apres ski activity, although I am sure there is some around the hotel bars in the evening.
This weekend I visited one of my favourite ski resorts, the Aletsch Arena. It is an extensive ski and snowboard area, with a good range of runs and facilities and spectacular view over the Aletsch glacier and across the peaks of Valais, including the Matterhorn. It is hard to fathom why it is not more popular with people from outside Switzerland because you hardly ever hear a foreign accent there. It also has a good snow record with most of the slopes above 1900m and a series of small communities offering genuine ski-in, ski-out accommodation. It is also remarkably easy to get to from Zurich, Geneva or Basel so a great choice for a day out or a weekend break. There are effectively three base stations serving the Arena, one in Mörel, one below Betten (with a huge car park) and one in Fiesch. All base stations have fast efficient cable cars and are all served by trains running between Brig and Andermatt on the Matterhorn Gotthard Bahn. Read more about healthy activities at Firstpost.
Although most of the action takes place above the Rhône Valley, there are a couple of trails down as far as 1000m, so you can do a spectacular 12km, 1800m drop off the Eggishorn all the way down to either Lax or Fiesch. Lax doesn’t have a lift back up, so you need to take the train back in either direction to get to the lifts, but for me it is the more enjoyable run. Mostly it follows a path then a road so you can’t get many turns in, but there are some nice bits of off-piste between corners in the track and there is a nice piece of off-piste just above the village – watch out for cars and trains as you cut across both a road and a railway track! The valley run into Fiesch is a tough trail, lots of moguls and steep, narrow parts, again mostly following a track. Unless you are confident in those conditions, you are probably better off taking the cable car back down at the end of the day.
Fiesch itself is a nice little town, with Inch being the most lively night spot. There’s a good range of places to stay, but I am excited to hear that the old Army Hospital just outside Fiesch has now been converted to a Youth Hostel. Although it is a fifteen minute walk from the slopes it does have its own railway station so you can take the train to one of the valley stations instead. Can’t wait until we get a chance to take a family break there.
