 Poster: A snowHead
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Hi folks,
this is my first "review" of a ski resort ( in loose terms...) but feel it may be relevant to those with kids on a budget.
Years ago when I was based in Germany with the Army, I used to go to Winterberg in mid Germany at the weekends to ski. Back then, late 80's to mid 90's, there seemed to be more snow around or maybe thats just my perception.
Anyway having lived in the States we could drive an hour and choose from 3 resorts cheaply at weekends and since coming back, we've been putting off family ski holidays due to the horrendous costs then it dawned on me to look at Winterberg.
So I knew they pretty much always got some snow in February and booked an apartment for Feb term holidays whilst possibly taking a risk there may not be loads of the white stuff but enough to ski on with our 10 and 6 year olds. Our kids are not beginners but not quite happy on black runs and are more than happy just refining their skills on lower grade runs whilst cruising along, trying jumps and going in and out of the trees. We as parents are happy enough to follow them then tag teaming it while we disappear for a few runs ourselves. (grandparents who also ski came)
An overview of Winterberg is in the link below rather than me having to explain it all!
https://www.skiliftkarussell.de/en/
The lift system is easy, card entry system easy and all the car parks are free parking so we got there at 0830, had a coffee, booted up then first through the gates at 0900. All the lift areas all have decent cafe's, ski rental and loads of racks for kit. You can also pretty much walk to a lift system in 10 minutes from the town centre.
We always self cater and try and cut costs as much as we can, have our own skis, all the kit we need etc and I planned all the costs as per below taking loads of frozen slow cooked food with us, snacks etc for on the hills. We live near Fareham and we drove to Dover, ferry to Calais and then its a 5.30 hour drive the other end.
So these are our costs for 8 nights:
2 bedroomed fairly luxurious apartment overlooking the slopes, 100 metres from the best cafe/pub in the area and 200 metres from the lift systems and important for us, out of the main drag £1100
Return ferry tickets, Dover to Calais £150
Ski passes, 2 adults, 2 kids, 8 days £350
Food budget for the whole week, £200 (plus we had at least 5 days meals with us as well as lunch stuff, snacks etc and there is an Aldi and Lidl in town)
Daily spending budget, £40 per day, £320
Ski insurance, we already have via our bank
Petrol £250
So total costs were £2370 (we paid for the apartment last September and the ferry in October). It's still a lot of money but by budgeting for about 6 months it worked out perfectly also, we didn't use all of our daily spending money, food budget or all the petrol money. If you haven't got your own skis etc, there are bucketloads of places to hire them from and it's not that expensive. The town is a good night out, I'm past that now and can get a bit loud so if you do go and you want peace and quiet consider that.
Anyway, I know it's probably not everyone's cup of tea but if you have a budget and kids it really is a good place to go. Skiing wise, when we were there at least 18-20 lifts were open each day with more than enough snow for decent skiing and we skied for at least 6 hours a day and only sacked it because the kids were tired. (also they have the most powerful snow cannons in Germany and usually make snow of cold enough)
Hope this is of use to someone! We've already booked the same apartment for next year. Also before I forget, Winterberg is an outdoors town so there's loads of things to do in the summer as well.
Cheers, Den
Last edited by Poster: A snowHead on Mon 2-03-20 13:49; edited 1 time in total
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Nice review, thanks for posting 
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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Thanks mate! I think it's a bit overlooked becasue its not fashionable.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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How busy was it? It's my closest decent sized ski resort, but so far I've been put off by reports of crowds (especially at weekends).
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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Thanks for posting! It is an area I haven’t heard of so will definitely look into further.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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| Rcav wrote: |
| How busy was it? It's my closest decent sized ski resort, but so far I've been put off by reports of crowds (especially at weekends). |
Hi there, gets busy at lunch time so we picked the less popular slopes after that besides, the girls were tired by then so off t'pub :0)
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