 Poster: A snowHead
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Dates: Thursday 24th - Monday 28th March 2016. 4 days skiing (Friday - Monday)
Travel: We live in Switzerland so traveled by car. Andermatt is a turn off from the motorway shortly before the Gottard tunnel. Traffic approaching the Gottard tunnel was very heavy with a 10km jam - we were held for 40 minutes at traffic lights on the motorway. A further 3h delay awaited us if we stayed on the motorway, so we came off at Wassen and took the old mountain road to Andermatt, which was free flowing. According to Google this isn't a passable route, but it is! And is much recommended if you are actually going to Andermatt (you can't get back on the motorway so can't use it to try and bypass the actual tunnel traffic). However, Andermatt also has a train station, and this would be a really easy way to reach it from the UK - fly to Zurich, hop on a train at the airport, and a couple of hours later arrive in the mountains. Given this and the ease of getting non-standard Sat-Sat accommodation, I'm surprised it's not a more popular long weekend destination.
Accommodation: We booked 5 weeks before travel and at this point there was plenty of availability and no problems with long weekend dates. At least in the hotels/B&Bs there doesn't seem to be any attempt to restrict to Sat-Sat. We stayed at the Alpenhotel Schlüssel . The hotel is run by the friendly Thomas, who speaks reasonable English and is very friendly. The hotel was rebuilt in 1996 and works rather well - it has a decent sized ski/boot room in the basement, the rooms are a really good size with a balcony and plenty of storage, hooks, hangers, shelves, drawers etc. The Gemstock base station is about 5 minutes walk in ski boots carrying skis. Apparently there is a bus, but we didn't investigate. There is a Coop supermarket on the ground floor. Breakfast is included and is a good standard continental spread. If I had to nitpick, it's a little bit lacking in character and soundproofing, though the latter wasn't really a problem as all other guests staying there were quiet and early to bed. But we'd be happy to stay again. The first night we arrived shortly before 8pm and Thomas recommended the restaurant at his sister hotel, Gasthaus zum Sternen, a couple of minutes walk away in the town centre. Food was perfectly nice typical Swiss mountain fare (we had Rösti).
The town: Andermatt is pretty small, but has everything you need. Apart from the Saturday night, when several bars had live music/apres going on, it was fairly quiet. There are big development plans and some new apartment blocks have gone up with more going up. There's also a plan to develop the ski area of the next few years. Most of it is rather quaint and cobbled, though there are also some more modern blocks.
The Skiing: Andermatt has two sides - Gemsstock (north facing) and Nätschen (south facing). We were advised that snow conditions on the Nätschen side weren't great so we stuck entirely to the Gemsstock side. We really liked this ski area - it had some great slopes for working on longs and shorts, and also plenty of easily accessible off-piste (as well as some stuff going off the back that we didn't look at). The Felsental valley route is a great run down from near the top right back to the village. I rather liked that the main lifts were cable cars - this meant that even when the cable car was full, we could have entire pistes to ourselves either by getting off quickly or waiting 5 minutes for the hordes to disperse. There was also a t-bar we spent quite a bit of time lapping, which had a really nice run off the top and was generally quiet. Andermatt is lacking in trees, which I really missed, particularly on the Friday and Monday when the vis was bad. But all in all, we really like the ski area and will definitely return next year. It's a little further to drive than our usual haunt but we really liked the ski area so worth to do it a few times a season.
Instruction/guiding: we booked an instructor with the ski school Alpine Sports Andermatt. Our instructor was Han Semmelink, a Dutch national who spoke excellent English and was full cert under the Austrian system. Although it was his first season in Andermatt, but he knew the mountain and its history well and gave us lots of tips for future visits as well as showing us around. The ski school director, Peter Widdup, is Australian, and is passionate about the snowsports industry and was similarly helpful regarding where to stay/eat in Andermatt.
Restaurants: On the Mountain we ate at the Gadäbar, at the bottom of the t-bar for three of the days. Food was very good, and reasonably priced. There is an open fire to huddle round on cold days, and a sun terrace outside for sunny spring days. We experienced both! All the food is homemade. On the Saturday we ate at the hotel at the bottom of the Gemsstock cable car having done the Felsental run. Food was fine but I wouldn't rush back knowing there are better options. Off the mountain, we ate at The River House on Peter's recommendation. On the Friday and Sunday we ate in the bar, which is incredibly reasonably priced for the quality and for Switzerland. On the Saturday night we had the restaurant menu, which was more expensive, but not unreasonably so, and really excellent. Honestly, we do usually like to try different places, but both on and off mountain we found both The River House and the Gadäbar so good that we were disinclined to try anywhere else. The bar at The River House seemed to be the main post-ski congregating point and there was a civilised but buzzy atmosphere. The River House also has a few rooms, and next time we will try to stay there.
Ski hire/servicing: I only brought my fat skis, but the vis meant we actually ended up staying on piste on two of the days, so I hired a pair of head magnums from the shop at the bottom of the Gemsstock cable car. The young guys that ran it spoke excellent English, couldn't have been more helpful, and knew their product range inside out. Kit was in excellent condition, no problem to leave kit/shoes at the shop overnight/during the day, no problem to change skis if you fancied something else. Snowpenguin had acquired a nasty core shot next to the edge of his new WD R98s a couple of weeks prior that needed a patch repair. Following another recommendation, he took it to Meyer's Sporthaus in town who did an excellent repair with no base grind for 15 CHF.
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