 Poster: A snowHead
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Help needed please! we are a young family new to skiing, but with a non-skiing wife/mother...
Last year we skiied in Courchevel 1650 which meant that we could at least have lunch on the slopes as a family because my wife could purchase a non-skiing week ski pass to access the Bel Air.
Can anyone out there please recommend any other resorts (anywhere) which offer mountain restaurants accessible by non-skiers with weekly non-skiing lift passes?
Many thanks
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Wengen or Zermatt.
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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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Can anyone out there please recommend any other resorts (anywhere) which offer mountain restaurants accessible by non-skiers with weekly non-skiing lift passes?
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Practically all resorts I know would offer that - but what else do you want from the resort? What else does wife/mother fancy doing?
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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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davenfield, welcome to Snow Heads 
The pedestrian pass is available in most places I could think of, but it may be an idea to also look for places which offer non-skiing distractions such as shops, cafes, a 'proper' village, spa facilities, a pool, snow-shoeing, crafts, local history etc. There are many places in Austria and France (and probably other countries too, but they are the ones I have knowledge of  ) which could offer these things and would make the mornings and afternoons before and after the lunch trip, fun and interesting
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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 the prompt replies to date. We are happy to do our research re non-skiing distractions -although my wife has been generally happy with a week of leisure in a good hotel/chalet, her bed, some books, lunch and her laptop! Our first trip was to Beaver Creek and non-skiing passes were only available daily and expensive (with very limited accessible restaurants) -1650 is great but ideally we want to experience different places and countries every year.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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Don't know about the pass situation but when asked for a recommendation for a group with "doubtful" skiers i always say Saas Fee. It has a stunning setting, a long street with lots of shops, bars and restaurants, (technically pedestrianised but watch out for milkfloats) and IIRC you can get right to the top of the mountain by gondola/cable car/railway rather than chairlifts.
Also, the nursery area is right there down by the town and unlike most places, the motorway run home at 4pm does not run through it. So if your wife can be tempted to "have a go" I haven't been anywhere better.
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A ski resort which has a thermal baths nearby might please her even more
e.g. Bad Kleinkirchheim, Bad Hofgastein, Sölden (Aquadome), maybe even Kaprun.
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I think most resort websites will have piste maps showing where the mountain restaurants are, and the tariffs for lifts should indicate what the prices are for pedestrians.
In Les Saisies, there are several mountain restaurants in the main area which can be reached on foot - on snowhoes after heavy snow, but the paths are groomed and they're usually fine in walking boots. One (the Benetton) is a gentle 20 minute walk from the village centre, the other - the Panoramique - is a fairly strenuous 50 minutes if you have a car - a bit too long to be any fun if you haven't. But lots of people go up the lift as pedestrians and the view is stunning - webcam is mounted on the restaurant but doesn't do justice to the 360 degree view across the Alps. http://www.lessaisies.com/webcams-les-saisies.html There is also another very nice one (Les Halles), reachable from the same car parking spot in a short walk, but not so easily by lift.
There are several other mountain restaurants accessible by pedestrians in other parts of the Espace Diamant. Too many to list, really - I can think of several off the top of my head - and I'm sure this area isn't unusual in that.
You can't get weekly pedestrian tickets, as far as I know, but the ski buses are all free for anyone, and a trip up the longest lift is around 6/7 euros I think.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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davenfield, we can recommend St Gervais as a lovely town, good facilities, restaurants, cafes etc., Stunning scenery all around (you don't have to be up the mountain to see/enjoy it ) and easy to access the lower levels of restaurants certainly, as a pedestrian, although I haven't done it myself so can't be more specific. It's also a spa town with a highly regarded spa centre. We are off there on Saturday, for our 3rd trip in three years including summer, so you can see it's a recommendation from experience as well as the heart!
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I may be speaking out of turn here but, while as the others have said, most resorts offer pedestrian passes, unless your wife has a physical issue preventing her from skiing, I would work on encouraging her to learn.
A couple of weeks investement in ski school or ideally at lessons in the UK before your holiday, will pay dividends as you and the rest of your family improve together. One of the greatest pleasures for me as a parent is and has been skiing with my kids as they have grown up and their skiing developed. We loved skiing a few runs with them at lunch or at the end of the day when they were younger and in ski school and now love even more skiing with them all over the mountain now that they are teenagers and are far better skiers than my wife or I will ever be. They even take me off piste!!
As you and the kids improve, your wife is likely to miss out on more and more during the holiday. At the moment you are happy to meet at a restaurant close to base, but very soon the rest of you will want to explore the whole ski area and getting back to base at lunch time every day will become impractical. My wife is a competent, keen but not very confident skiier. When the kids or I want to do a more challenging run that she doesn't fancy, she either sits that one out with a Chocolat Chaud at a mountain restaurant or she skis the adjacent red or blue and we meet again at the bottom. But, importantly she is able to go to all the areas of the resort with us and we enjoy picnics, drinks or lunch all over the mountain, as a family.
As I said, skiing as a family is one of the great pleasures of being a parent.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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weedram,
Very very well said, couldn't agree more
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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weedram, there are probably good reasons why the OP's wife isn't going to ski - we all love it to bits but it's not for everyone.
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pam w, I wonder if that's true though - my wife was a reluctant and very nervous skier and I thought she'd give up at one time but she's kept at it. One week is enough for her (though she sometimes does two) and she's still nervous about it and skis slowly but in control. But she likes being amongst the mountains and skiing does offer the chance to get about doesn't it. She likes doing runs such as Cascades in the GM, where you get away from the crowds and is happy to finish early if I want to rip it down a red or two or go on a parallel blue.. It seems to work on the whole. I just wonder if most people would be drawn to it with the right sort of introduction - maybe I'm wrong.....
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