Guiding in St Anton

A snowHead

We had a great day out with Piste 2 powder in December. The local guide was really friendly and knew his stuff.

The only thing to be careful of is what group they put you in. There seems to be commercial pressure to keep the group sizes reasonably* large (naturally) so you may find yourself in a group that's not at the level you really want as they have merged two sessions. We booked level 2 but got told on the day that the level was 1-2. I got a bit frustrated at having to stop too much. Two others in the group had a pretty tough time as it was too hard for them and at least one dropped out part way through the day.

* just to be clear, the groups weren't big by any means, they just combined the 2 level ones and the 6 level twos into one group. Not a huge issue for me but it did seem to be an issue for the two 'beginners' who really struggled.

A snowHead

Levels?????

http://www.pistetopowder.com/index.php?p=16-16-14

This is all subjective & is down to the actual person to assess themselves. Many over or under rate themselves or simply have no idea.

I can understand that if you only take a 1 or 2 week ski vacation a year.

You could be a Level 1 or 2 skier and still get eventually ascend & descend most hills probably even Everest !!

Its the fall line , style, natural flow & ability on skis in all types of snow conditions that rates Levels.

A company like P2P (all guiding company's) should put some accompanying example skiing videos on there websites of what is expected if you join a Level 3 or 4 group. This would IMO certainly get rid of a load of time wasters !!

There is nothing worse than joining a group where your be struggling holding people up or vica versa where your in a group with some show-off who is a better skier than the guide .

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

TheGeneralist,

P2P do make a note of customers and their levels so tend to put returning customers and customers who are honest / accurate about their level into the right group. As P2P do push to get the most out of a day (9:00 - 16:00 is typical) it's not unusual for customers to drop out when it suits them.

You need to Login to know who's really who.

Just to be clear, the level 1 skiers were quite clear about what level they were at (1). The level two skiers were also quite clear what level they were at (2). However we ended up in the same group.

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

TheGeneralist,

Fully understood just saying this normally doesn't happen. Suppose it's a difficult call for P2P or any other guiding company in this instance - do they turn the level 1 business away or not? During certain times of the year (e.g. Half term) all the guides are booked up and it's difficult to allocate the customers exactly to the different levels.

Help!!

Guiding in St Anton

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