First time DIY!!!

A snowHead

So after my first family Ski Holiday in 2014 I've decided to return with my daughter for 3 days skiing in Europe (after hip problems the last time, my wife decided that this SKI thing isn't for her wink

.

However, big difference is that we are going DIY and in the February School week.

After you guys were very helpful when I planned our first trip I thought I'd try again to seek some help.

So I'm looking at some Resorts with short transfers, 13 year old friendly and lots of beginner and intermediate slopes. On the list are:
Samoens/Flaine, Alpbach, Chaurousse and Niederan.

Does anyone have any comments on the above resorts (negative or positive)?
What happens if the slopes are closed but you have purchased a lift pass in advance? Do they refund?
Typically how do you get from the hotel to the Ski resort?
Can you leave your Skis and boots anywhere (lockers etc.) or do you have to walk back to the hotel with them?

As always any advice is appreciated.

A snowHead

Grand Massif (Samoens/Flaine etc) is good for a short break, you might struggle to get short term accommodation in Flaine which is mostly apartments and will be sold by the week in holiday periods. Try Morillon village, you are more likely to find a hotel room for a few nights in the valley, there is a gondola up to Les Esserts where you get to the skiing and most local hotels will be on or near a skibus route. There are great blue runs around there.

If you are near an airport where you can get to Innsbruck or Salzburg airports then they have very short transfers to lots of good resorts, smaller resorts could be good for just a few days and may be less busy with Brit tours at half term. some have train connections

Consider Zillertal area from Innsbruck or Ski Amade from Salzburg, both of these are made up of a number of smaller resorts with links, in Zillertal you can stay anywhere along the valley and travel by train/skibus to all the resorts, it is less convenient than staying slopeside but you are much more likely to find reasonable prices for a short break. Mayerhofen is less suitable for early intermediate but HochFugen/Kaltenbach has some lovely runs, i don't know the others.

Austria is generally cheaper for food and lift passes than France as well though Grand Massif is at the reasonable end of the scale.

For ski/boots, hire near the gondola station and most shops will have lockers you can use, sometimes you can rent a locker in the gondola station as well.

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

As you are going only for a few days you would need to look for a resort that has daily transfers. Geneva might be best. Or would you consider hiring a car? Some resorts just have shared transfers at weekends. Try bens bus, simply transfers or Altibus and go massif.
You also need to check if flights match any scheduled transfers. Private transfers are possible but can be more than hiring a car.
Resort would depend on how you want to get there ie. Shared transfer, train, private transfer, length of time to resort.
I have recently skied in Switzerland and Austria and used their trains. Both countries have a great train network but Austria is much cheaper.
As you are going in February I would say most resorts should be ok for snow but this year is not a normal year. But as most places have snow making I think you should be ok. As for getting money back if lifts are closed, I doubt it. Check the website of wherever you decide to go, most sites are available in English.
You can usually leave skis n boots in lockers at base stations but I usually just take stuff back to hotel walking or by bus if you can't ski in ski out. As sometimes you might want to go to different area next day and your stuff is the other way.
I hope this helps. Happy to help with any other questions.

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Niederau would be fine for a few days, in fact almost anywhere in Austria would be good. I'm doing a short break at half term and landed on a resort (Nauders) by looking through Booking.com and finding a decent looking hotel at a good price. Got cheap flights into Munich and cheap hire car to get us the 3 hour drive to Nauders. For half term I didn't find much in the way of good hotel deals (or even availability) in the major resorts that get lots of British visitors. Loads of options for small resorts and those less well known in Britain (Nauders scores highly on both counts!).

Don't buy a lift pass in advance - there's rarely any benefit to doing this. You'll find that in lots of resorts now you can buy your lift pass in your hotel when you arrive in the evening, so you don't waste any time getting going in the morning.

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

I'm off to Alpbach on the 4th March for 4 days. only 45 mins from Innsbruck, i hired a merc estate for £85, return flights £125.00 each, 4* hotel £350.00 each. its a beautiful village and has plenty of skiing for three for four days.

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I think Austria might be best provided you avoid resorts popular with Brits which will be very busy. Its French school holidays and even resorts which scarcely ever see a Brit will be busy, with little accommodation available, especially for less than a full week.

Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...

Worth looking at Morzine /les gets if you're after a short transfer too - about an hour ish from Geneva. Morzine, being a proper town, has a lot more to do in the evenings than the others, although my limited knowledge of teenage girls suggests that as long as you have wifi you won't hear any complaints. Lots of little hotels in both towns. My mate with a tweenage girl and a teenage girl goes to Les Gets a lot. Think the hotel he uses has an outdoor pool from vague memory.

Second the Flaine comments - it is mostly apartments there. The pierre vacances apartments just along from the spar / black grouse near the lifts have a pool room / pizza outlet sort of thing going on. Morillon / samoyen <sp>! have a bit more to offer there.

Short walks from these French places (usually) so no need for boot lockers near the lifts. Can't comment on the austrian ones you're looking at.

Never had the issue with lifts being closed since Andorra in 2003 ish - they wouldn't refund, but offered up a letter saying that they had closed them due to high winds. We then used this to get a refund through our insurance.

After all it is free

Flights always expensive to Geneva in February. If you go for an airport that isn't just a ski airport (eg Munich for Austria or Milan for Italy) you'll find prices much more reasonable. Italy also much less crowded than France during half term week & car hire is cheap. Still plenty of hotels on booking.com

@magd36, look for flights to Munich, Innsbruck (may be difficult both on price and short turn around), Salzburg (look for non-standard transfer days) and then see what is available in any of the local ski resorts. Transfers from all those airports can be as little as 45 minutes to an hour to decent resorts offering lots of child friendly skiing for 3 days. The transfer option also operate every day. For more off the wall options look at other airports not particularly associated with skiing - Graz, Klagenfurt, Ljubljana, Memmingen, Friedrichshafen and see what is within an easy transfer window. If your daughter is not a particularly competent skier she will be more than happy skiing with Dad even in a relatively "tiny" resort. For three days you do not need 100s of kilometres of pisted runs!

*Ski* the Net with snowHeads

Thanks for all the tips and I'm now looking with all this new info to hand.

As most have said I'm not looking for hundreds of kilometers of runs and I'm afraid I'm the one with the limited skiing ability as opposed to my daughter!!!

It looks like it will be 2 flights to get to anywhere so if nothing else it will be an adventure.

Thanks to everyone.

snowHeads are a friendly bunch.

@magd36, where do u fly from? Are you taking skis or hiring? I use Lufthansa (or Swiss) a lot they have good connections through Frankfurt and are free ski carriage. Just don't do the "light" option as that's hand luggage only.

snow reports

Flying from Edinburgh or Glasgow. Based on the ideas here I think I'm going to do direct to Munich and train down to Austria. No skis of our own so we'll be hiring when we get there.

Ba fly direct to Salzburg from Glasgow and jet2 from Edinburgh. I'm not sure about Munich.
OBB the Austrian train co is great. You might have to use the german website https://www.bahn.de/p_en/view/
If coming from Munich. Both have English translations.

You know it makes sense.

@magd36, I'd definitely try to get to Salzburg first, then look at Munich as an alternative. From Salzburg there are daily transfers to the Sport Amadé area both with taxi services and public transport (bus from in front of the airport to the Hauptbahnhof which is also the bus station). If you are renting a car the rentals are in the car park opposite the terminal building, so it is much more compact and easy to navigate.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

Les Gets, mentioned above, is stupidly busy at half term. Obscure Austrian resort a far better bet. (obscure in that no tour operators go there).

A snowHead

@magd36, bear in mind that the train from Munich airport requires at least one change in Munich itself. Also that to get to e.g. Ski Amade, you have to get the train to Salzburg anyway, night as well land there.

A snowHead

I've not seen anyone mention Lyon airport - major city airport, only 45mins drive to Grenoble and then the alps are your oyster from there. EasyJet do good flight+car prices.

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@RiffC, Welcome to snowHeads!

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@magd36 we are in the same position. Flights & transfers are too much so we are driving (make sure you get a widget for the tolls) from Yorkshire as we did last year.
Little sneaky tip have a look at the resorts you fancy. Go on Facebook & see if there are any groups (eg. friends of Flaine). Join the group & post asking if anyone has accommodation available.
We've done that for the last 2 years & got non commercial apartments really cheaply (£500 for Feb Half term). We're going to Flaine so if you end up their drop me line.
Do you want me to post in the Flaine & Les Carroz etc groups that I am a member of?

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

@magd36, As another Scot I think you are right to go for Munich, it is the only direct option away from weekend changeover days. Sleazyjet from Edi works OK, you save much more time not changing flights than you would gain by getting to Salzburg airport.

Train is a perfectly workable option if you don't fancy a hire car. There are also plenty of transfer companies operating from Munich to Austrian resorts.

Get a Bayern ticket for 2 which covers any local train in Bavaria and will get you to Salzburg (on any train except the high speed IC and ICE which are not common on that route). From Salzburg St Johann im Pongau among others has direct train access and most resorts are pretty close to the railway.

Alternative is Bayern ticket to Kufstein and then bus/taxi to one of the Wildschonau resorts, Niederau Auffach etc.

For accommodation look at the village tourist board websites, a lot of them have bookings for smaller hotels and pensions which don't appear on booking.com etc

You'll need to Register first of course.

If you're not travelling on a peak Saturday then driving a hire car from Munich airport to an Austrian resort is actually an enjoyable couple of hours - good roads, good views and pretty easy navigation. If you don't fancy driving and trains don't work for your chosen resort then these guys are good for transfers from Munich - https://www.tirol-taxi.at/ I've only used them once but they were faultless. Meeting point is close to where you come out of luggage collection and there was no hanging around in the airport.

Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...

Thanks to everyone and I've now booked my flights to Munich and will be travelling down to Alpbach. Got a small guesthouse off Booking.com for a decent rate. I was very restricted on the days I could travel and would never have come up with this option had you not given me all the tips.

I'm really tempted to book skis and lift pass now as I don't want to get there and find they're out of skis or no lift pass available. Am I just panicking???

After all it is free

@magd36, You can buy a Europa-Ticket from the Deutsche Bahn website and load it on to your smartphone. As long as one of the stations is outside of Germany (start or end it does not matter) you can get a good deal that will get you too and from the airport to a station near Alpbach (probably Jenbach or Wörgl are your best bets for Alpbach). Then bus or taxi to your hotel from the station. I used this to get a return ticket to Vienna (Rosenheim to Vienna with a change at Salzburg) for the princely sum of 79 Euros last December.

One thing to consider , to avoid Half term, rip off and business , is to avoid resorts , where a lot of UK and Irish skiers would go, and also head for a country, that has a different half term calendar to UK / Ireland . A quick Google of school holidays by country would point you somewhere

If you stay in a town say 5-10 km away from the main resorts , accom will be cheaper, and easier to find

It is possible there will be a lift from the satellite town to the ski area, online piste maps / and or google maps useful

If you zoom in close in Google maps , you will ski lifts and accom

Most hotels, will have a free ski minibus to bring you to lift (if you dont have a hire car)

Try and use a ski locker , at lifts, to minimise carrying or walking in ski gear , these are cheap to rent and secure. , As well as ski gear, can be used for hats, gloves, water etc

I am currently checking out hotels in Italy , these start at 55 pps HB, Per night, assuming you are not right in a resort centre

Bergamo isnt a bad airport to consider, its flight timings allow for ski and flight on same day

Help!!

First time DIY!!!

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