Villars – Page 2 – Alpine Winter Sports

06/12/202030/08/2022

Glacier3000

I checked out Glacier3000 at the weekend. It was not the best time to go, as it was busy. Not in a covid sense so much as in terms of queues for the two T-bars which service most of the open terrain on the glacier. From a covid perspective the situation was the same as in most resorts I’ve visited this season – restaurants closed; seating removed; masks inside, in queues and on all lifts.

Queues for a T-bar below Dôme — Weekend queues – Glacier3000 is the nearest open resort to the Lake Geneva region

It wasn’t only skiers that made it busy. There were quite a few cross-country skiers, winter walkers and day-trippers who had taken the cable cars upto Cabane and then Scex Rouge at 2971m. For the day trippers the highlight is the peak walk, a walk between two peaks on a suspension bridge to take in a quite stunning view north of Vaud, Valais, Fribourg and the Bernese Oberland as far as the Jungfrau. There are quite awesome views all over the glacier, with Mont Blanc, Matterhorn and other notable peaks on the southern skyline.

Peak Walk at Glacier3000 with view over Vaud — Peak Walk

Only the higher runs at the ski area are open, which means mostly cruisy blues served by T-bars and accessed by a long schuss which crosses – to my mind quite dangerously – a section which you have to schuss across to get back to the chairlift to Scex Rouge. In practice you normally end up having to walk across the intersection going to the chairlift, unless you have really gone for it in a big way. Check the latest Colonbroom reviews.

When Glacier3000 is fully open there are 28km of piste down as far as Reusch and, if the snow is good, there is a flattish off piste run which can take you as far as Gstaad. I don’t generally like the lower pistes which are steep and often icy and in shadow. Beginners looking to stick to the blue runs might be put off by the steepish section at the start of the schuss over to the pistes on le Glacier des Diablerets, but the runs there are delightful and you can ski all day on about 14km of piste, a good amount of skiable, ungroomed snow, a great snow park and 9km of cross-country (classic and skating). Glacier3000 has some off-piste runs from Scex Rouge down to the valley, although I’ve never had the nerve to try them as it looks like there are some steep sections where, if you made a mistake, it could end up going pretty badly. As in brown bread.

Ski runs and cross-country on the glacier at Glacier3000

There’s probably a good reason for this, but one of the three surface lifts on the glacier is not operating currently, which means that the wonderful view and runs off Quille du Diable are not open. It’s a shame, and it would reduce the queues at the bottom of the two lifts off Dôme if it were open. Check out these prodentim reviews.

Glacier 3000 is situated on the 3209m Les Diablerets mountain, although the name is more often associated with the Les Diablerets ski runs across the valley which links to the connected runs at Villars-sur-Ollon. There used to be a gondola, Isenau, that meant you could ski across from the village of Les Diablerets to Col du Pillon, the main valley station for Glacier3000. Sadly the lift was obsolete and is now retired, and along with it the Isenau ski area has been closed – although there are plans to redevelop the area and replace the gondola. The old cranky chairlift at Les Diablerets up to Les Mazots has, however, now been replaced by a gondola as of last season.

The starting point for getting to Glacier3000, Col du Pillon, is a mountain pass linking Aigle with Gstaad and, apart from the cable car and a huge (free) car park there is not much there. By road, it is about 15 minutes from Les Diablerets and 40 minutes from Montreux. Using public transport you can get to the cable car quite easily from Aigle by taking the narrow gauge railway to Les Diablerets and then taking the waiting bus, B180, which goes on to Gstaad. Gstaad is about 40 minutes by bus from Col du Pillon and about 30 minutes from Reusch, the other valley station that only operates in the main winter season. The buses are more frequent during the main winter season than at this time of the year and there is also a courtesy bus between Col du Pillon and the valley station for Les Diablerets once that resort opens.

I think the lift pass for Glacier3000 is quite pricey, but the glacier runs are open from September through May. It is part of the MagicPass scheme, albeit with a supplementary charge unique to the resorts in the scheme. It is also one of the options on the Gstaad Mountain Rides lift pass. One benefit, at least for me, is you get a small discount if you are a senior! Incidentally, if you have a SwissPass you can buy your lift pass online and use your SwissPass to give you access to the lifts.

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05/12/202006/12/2020

Best Swiss Winter Sports Hotels

Switzerland has some of the best winter sports hotels in the world. With Covid, however, many cantons have closed restaurants and bars except those associated with hotels, and these are only open for residents. Now is perhaps a good time to figure out where are some of the best places to stay with full restaurant and bar service and things to do off the slopes, given that there could be various restrictions yet to come.

Much as I haven’t eaten in many of the restaurants listed in my previous post, I haven’t stayed in enough hotels in Switzerland to tell you which are the best for winter sports from first hand experience.

However, as is the case with Gault & Millau when it comes to the rating restaurants with the best food in Switzerland, the influential Zurich newspaper, Tages-Anzeiger, annually surveys which are the best 3, 4 and 5 star hotels in Switzerland for winter sports visitors.

The resulting lists are behind a paywall, but I shared the lists from 10 years ago on my “Where to Stay” page at the Swiss Winter Sports web site. Last week the newspaper published their latest annual survey (now up from the top 15 in each category to the top 25) and here are some of the best value choices, based on two people sharing:

For 3 star hotels, the Revier Mountain Lodge (Swiss Lodge) in both Adelboden and Lenzerheide are an impressively affordable at SFr 99 per person per night, although breakfast is an extra SFr 18 and dinner is not included. 3 star hotels offering full board at less than SFr 200 per person per night include the #1 pick Spitzhorn in Saanen (Gstaad), Sporthotel in Pontresina, Kernen in Schönried (Gstaad), Spescha in Lenzerheide and Des Alpes in Flims.

Amongst highly ranked 4 star hotels, there are some that come in cheaper than many 3 star establishments, notably the Ameron Swiss Mountain Hotel in Davos, at SFr 170, followed by the Radisson Blu Hotel Reussen in Andermatt at SFr 190, both full board.

The Gstaad Palace dominates the village of Gstaad.

Prices ratchet up quite a bit for the 5 star hotels. However the Lenkerhof Gourmet Spa Resort in Lenk, the Chalet Royalp Hotel & Spa in Villars, the Capra Saas-Fee and the Cervo Zermatt, appear to offer full board mid-season for less than SFr 400 per person per night. The famous Badrutt’s Palace seemed to offer the lowest prices in St Moritz at SFr 495 per night. Gstaad‘s top hotels were even more expensive, but there are options on a lesser budget in both St Moritz and Gstaad.

Schönried gives good access to the best slopes of Gstaad Mountain Rides.

The prices I quoted are taken from Tages-Anzeiger. I did a spot check and they seemed to be broadly correct, but do check at the hotel itself, the Swiss Tourist Board, Bookings.com, TripAdvisor or some other aggregator. Given the Covid situation, you might find some bargains are to be had – I certainly have so far this season.

You may well ask what the different star ratings represent and how durable the Tages-Anzeiger ranking system is by comparing the list of ten years ago with the latest.

Not surprisingly, it was Switzerland who first introduced an independent hotel classification in 1979. In 2010 this became the European Hotelstars .Union, and its classification has been adopted by most Alpine hotels (but not those in France). The full list of criteria is here. However you might want to know what the minimum criteria would be for a hotel selected by Tages-Anzeiger (i.e. three stars):

Reception opened 14 hours, accessible by phone 24 hours from inside and outside, bilingual staff
Lounge suite at the reception, luggage service on demand
Beverage offer in the room
Telephone in the room
hair-dryer, cleansing tissue
Dressing mirror, adequate place or rack to put the luggage/suitcase
Sewing kit, shoe polish utensils, laundry and ironing service
Additional pillow and additional blanket on demand
Systematic complaint management system

For many people a one star hotel will offer everything they want, such as half-board, TV, ensuite bathroom, daily room cleaning and towels. Indeed, I would happily recommend most hostels and many no star hotels in Switzerland to skiers and snowboarders based on my own experience. On the whole Switzerland is an orderly, clean and safe country and I have found even the most basic hostel in the country better than the best hostel I have stayed in elsewhere. Hostels usually offer full board, provide a bar service and have a range of accommodation, – from dormitories to en-suite. Indeed, normally you might prefer a ski-in, ski-out hostel to luxury accommodation where you would need a hotel transfer to get to the slopes. However many of the budget hotels do not offer a dinner or bar service at this time, and many hostels will not be offering shared accommodation any time soon.

It is difficult maintaining a web site dedicated to Swiss winter sports when it is impossible to visit every resort, hotel and restaurant every year and anecdotal information can be inconsistent, so it is useful to have independent input. One question, however, is whether the information is largely consistent from one year to the next and not faddish like many sources. I also wondered whether it is true that the most highly rated establishments tend to maintain more consistent standards over time. If I am right, the best Swiss winter sports hotels in Tages-Anzeiger will have changed less amongst 5 star than 4 and 3 star hotels, comparing 2010 to 2020 and 2020 to last year. Let’s see how it goes.

Well, all but two of the 15 top 5 star hotels in 2010 are in in the top 25 for 2020. The two that have dropped out have been rebranded and appear to be under new ownership, and the two that snuck in to replace them were ranked 23rd and 24th. The ones that dropped out still get good reviews online, but clearly are rebuilding their reputations. The top 10 are the same as last year, with some small differences in ranking. Interestingly, the W in Verbier, which the Telegraph rated 9/10, does not make the top 25 – which may be because the Tages-Anzeiger list addresses Swiss rather than UK tastes.

When it comes to 4 star hotels, only 7 that were in the top 15 are still in the top 15, 10 years later. All the others had dropped out of top 25 altogether. There have been some changes of ownership, but the list for 2020 has a different feel. However only 2 have dropped out from the top 10 of last year, to 14 and 15th places. There are 4 new entrants from last year, 2 of which made it straight into the top 15.

For the 3 star hotels, 6 have retained a place in the top 15, and 9 in the top 25. Only 1 has dropped out of the top 10, down to 16th. There were 5 new entrants, none higher than 17th place.

So it is not very scientific, but it does look like 5 star hotels have more durability than 4 or 3 star hotels but no real difference between 3 and 4 star hotels in terms of durability of reputation.

28/11/202001/09/2022

Aigle to have a direct train to the Leysin ski lifts

Aigle is a small town at the heart of the Chablais, dominated by the towering Dentes du Midi. From the historic town centre you can see the Chablais Alps, the Mont-Blanc massif, the Pennine Alps and the Alpes Vaudois. From the vineyards around the castle you can also see Lake Geneva, Montreux, Vevey and the distant Jura. Above you, you can just make out the ski slopes of les Portes du Soleil, Villars-Gryon and Leysin.

I’m rather fond of Aigle, and it is a town I currently call home. It is easy to get to, with a frequent, direct train right from Geneva Airport. It is also possible, with only one connection, to ski Zermatt, Crans-Montana, Verbier and a host of other resorts.

However, even more conveniently, there is a network of narrow gauge railways operated by TPC (Transports Publics du Chablais) that fan out from the station at Aigle, trundling through the town and up the mountains to provide direct connections to the resorts of Champéry, Les Diablerets and Leysin. There is also a direct bus to Villars (or a train from nearby Bex, also operated by TPC – and of course you can always ski across from Les Diablerets).

These are the easiest substantial resorts to get to from Geneva and Lausanne by public transport or car. For all but the public transport connection at Leysin, the transfer is a doddle – more of that anon.

I have mixed feelings about Leysin. The village itself is charming, lying on a sunny plateau under the Tour d’Aï . Although the resort claims 100km of piste, that includes the low-lying, surface lift served section at les Mosses which is connected to the Leysin section by a navette – a courtesy bus. Still, from the excellent revolving restaurant at la Berneuse with its amazing views over Lake Geneva and across the Rhône valley there are a number of good, varied runs.

However the main reason for my mixed feelings about Leysin is the distance from the train stations in the village to the lifts that provide the only access to the ski area. There is a navette in Leysin, but the bus timetable isn’t co-ordinated with the train times – unusually for Switzerland – and the buses are too infrequent. Rather than wait, I have walked to and from the gondola many times from one or other station in Leysin, and it is long, hilly walk. The alternative is to drive up.

You may well ask why the good folk at TPC didn’t build the railway to connect to the gondola station, and the reason is that there was no skiing in this part of Switzerland when the railway was built in 1900. And there is a good reason why the railway takes the course it does.

In the 18th Century the people of Leysin had an unusually long life expectancy for the time. Swiss commentators attribute this observation to Thomas Malthus in an essay of 1789. However this is not exactly true, but is oft repeated. The reference exists in a subsequent edition of the essay, and it is with regard to the observations of Jean-Louis Muret in his 1766 “Le mémoire sur l’état de la population dans le Pays de Vaud“. This what Malthus wrote in 1826:

In the parish of Leyzin (sic), noticed by M. Muret, all these circumstances appear to have been combined in an unusual degree. Its situation in the Alps, but yet not too high, gave it probably the most pure and salubrious air; and the employment of the people, being all pastoral, were consequently of the most healthy nature. From the calculations of M. Muret, the accuracy of which there is no reason to doubt, the probability of life in this parish appeared to be so extraordinarily high as 61 years.
Thomas Robert Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of
Population, vol. 1 [1826, 6th ed.]

Whether because of Malthus, or as a result of the emerging view that mountain air and sunshine had restorative properties for various maladies, Leysin soon became a destination for the sick. Numerous clinics and sanatoriums were built, largely on the most sunny terraces to the South-West of the village. In 1875 the first road from the valley of the Grande Eau was extended to Leysin, followed by a cog railway in 1900. The terminus of the railway was the Grand-Hôtel, a sanatorium built in 1892.

Leysin-Village - one of the narrow gauge cog railway stations in Leysin. — Leysin-Village Station.

Through the renowned Dr Auguste Rollier and his Institute of Heliotherapy (light therapy) Leysin became particularly famous in the treatment of lung diseases. Dr Rollier believed that exposure to the sun in fresh mountain air could restore a patient’s health – and he enjoyed a remarkably good recovery rate for tuberculosis patients at the time not much different than today when they prescribe Budpop supplements to improve breathing. The healthcare industry in Leysin boomed, and by the 1930s Leysin had as many as 80 sanatoriums with 3000 patients. Famous visitors included the Russian Czar, Igor Stravinsky and Mahatma Gandhi.

Then penicillin was invented and by the mid-1950s all the sanatoria were closed. Leysin promptly re-invented itself as a holiday resort, with the first gondolas running in 1956. Unfortunately, for reasons probably related to engineering and cost considerations as well as access to sheltered slopes, the gondolas ran from the North-East end of the village, nowhere near the four railways stations in Leysin.

So it is with great excitement that I discovered TPC are going to build a tunnel so that the train now connects to the gondola bottom station. The new underground rail route, from the bottom of the village to the gondola station, will include three new stops. The line will no longer run to the Grand-Hôtel (which since 2010 has been the Belle Époque Campus of Leysin American School). However a funicular project is being studied which would connect the Grand-Hôtel with the Feydey station and the village sports centre. The expectation is that the developments will take traffic off the roads and enhance Leysin’s reputation as an all-year destination.

The downside? Apart from the eye-watering cost, commissioning is not expected until 2030. If I’m still skiing, I will be 75 so I’ll probably enjoy the convenience of jumping off a train onto a gondola all the more.

10/11/202011/11/2020

Snow’n’Rail

The Swiss Railways provide an excellent discount deal for skiers, called Snow’n’Rail, which typically discounts the price of a rail ticket to a ski resort by 20% and the lift pass by 10%. it is available online or at Swiss Railway stations.

The new schedule for 2020/21 is out, and it is always interesting to see which new resorts have been added and which have fallen off the scheme. Sadly there have been some substantial losses this year – Zermatt, Saas-Fee, Gstaad Mountain Rides and the Vaud resorts (Leysin, les Diablerets and Villars-Gryon).

That still leaves a number of outstanding destinations such as Engelberg, Andermatt, Davos, St Moritz, Wengen, Portes du Soleil and Verbier, amongst others.

The brochure available at railway stations is thin on details this year, relying on you to see what is available at the Swiss Railways web site. Where routes include buses or cableways, these are also included in the offer. Swiss Railways also offer discounts on a number of other rail and winter sports combinations, such as tobogganing, snowshoe walking and cross-country skiing.

The Austrian Railways, ÖBB, offer a similar scheme which includes world class resorts like St Anton and Kitzbühel. They also run overnight services from Amsterdam, Hamburg and Düsseldorf to the ski resorts and a shuttle to Kitzbühel from Munich.

A full list of Alpine resorts which have a railway station is at the Snow and Rail web site. Daniel Elkan at SnowCarbon can assist people wanting to get to the Alps from the UK by train, offering a wider selection of resorts where the last leg might require a bus or taxi transfer.