What resorts/areas are good for both downhill and x-country please?

A snowHead

Part of my annual post-season therapy is to start to think about where to ski next winter (so long to wait.... Sad

). Quandry is that my OH has given up on downhill but is now into x-country instead. So I'm looking for somewhere that will suit us both for a week next winter.

I'm a bit of a nut who likes to ski all day and go all over the place (so really prefer a large area - e.g. Kitz + Ski Welt in Austria kept me very happy for a week last month) whereas OH is content to do a few hours each day and then curl up somewhere warm and cosy. We won't have a car for transport but are happy to take local buses to get around to different areas each day if necessary.

Any recommendations greatly received. Many thanks!

A snowHead

Les Saisies has one of the best XC areas in France with some quite testing descents (far too testing for me..... ). For downhill skiing it is lift-linked to the wider Espace Diamant with 185 kms of piste. Next season there is to be a new fast chairlift with 3 new pistes - so that total will rise. If you stay in LS you won't need any buses, though they do exist. You could easily do a day in Les Contamines (by bus, not possible to ski there) if you wanted a change of scene.

If your OH wants a good mileage of flat valley-bottom style XC shuffling, then Les Saisies might be too challenging.

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

Andermatt is lovely. Lots of XC, good snow record and a nice town.

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Do a search on nordic here. There was a thread on exactly that list a year or two ago.

Off the top of my head: St Moritz, Seefield, and some place in eastern Switzerland I forgot.

Problem with a lot of the good xc places are the downhill offering aren't the best. When you think about it, downHILL needs "hills" (gradien), xc needs to be reasonably flat.

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

Serre Chevalier has plenty of cross country trails in the valley, and Alpe d'Huez isn't bad either. Avoid 2Alpes - it has no Nordic ski possibilities whatsoever.

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skihippo, Base yourself in somewhere in the Ski Amadé area of Salzburgerland like Altenmarket im Pongau or it's neighbour Radstadt (where a well known snowHead family have a great catered chalet) and you can travel around all over the place using buses as there is a wealth of resorts all within 30 minutes. The cross-country runs actually start in the towns as well so your OH will also have a superb range of runs and plenty of kilometres to keep them happy. It does help if you have your own wheels as you can get around faster and explore the slopes more, but there are lots of snowHeads in the area as well.

Transfer from the airport is also very quick - Salzburg is 70kms away so depending on traffic a transfer time of under an hour is easy and it is motorway all the way (no twisting mountain roads in a TOs coach Little Angel

) Munich is a wee bit further away but linked by motorway so again a very easy transfer, although traffic can be a problem on peak weekends.

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Take the train from Munich - usually €19 each way if you book in advance. Great value.

After all it is free

Seefeld, Livigno and Banff have the best XC I have come across (Mrs M likes skiing uphill).

The downhill is a bit limited at Seefeld but the XC is superb. From Seefeld you can XC in the surrounding villages of Leutasch, Scharnitz, Reith, Mosern & Buchen. Mrs M likes to get the bus to the Wildmoos alm. You also have the railway station & can get anywhere from St Anton to Innsbruck in about half an hour.

You can get the travel round the resorts from Banff; Sunshine, Lake Louise, Mt. Norquay, Bow Valley etc., just watch out for the cougars (no Boris, the big cats). I'm sure Mrs M took a bus to somewhere interesting there as well but can't remember the name - something like an Olympic training area.

Livigno has a good mix of downhill on both sides of the valley, and 30-40 k (depending on who you believe) of XC along the valley floor. It's a very good setup for the XC but Mrs M says she prefers Austria.

I have been looking at the marketing blurb for Schladming and that sounds promising. Isn't that just down the road from Radstadt ?

musher, Yep, about 20 minutes by car. But flangesax is the best to contact about that as they are based in Radstadt all year round and know the area really well.

hilary t, You can travel by train from Munich to Salzburg in a group of 5 for about 30 Euros each way (Schönen Bayern Ticket bought on the day of travel), then change to the Austrian system. I've never seen a price as low as that even using a BahnCard 50 for Munich Airport to anywhere in the Ski Amadé system. How long ago did you get that kind of price and how far booked in advance?

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skihippo, Have a look at Le Grand Bornand. XC is reportedly very good although never tried it myself. World Cup Biathlon scheduled there last year. Easy access from Geneva. Not sure if you are a mileage hound that there would be enough to keep you busy in LGB for the week unless you are willing to explore off piste. However, there is an Aravis ski-pass available which would include La Clusaz and is linked by ski bus.

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Samerberg Sue, I managed to get that price for nearly all of my trips this winter, booked in Oct for Nov, Dec and early Jan travel, Jan for Feb and Mar travel and Feb for Apr travel. Check both DBahn.de and OeBB.at, the latter usually has these prices for nearer the travel date, whereas they disappear more quickly on dbahn.de. If you want to see only those times which have the cheap tickets on OeBB.at, click on Spar Scheine tickets. You see Spar Scheine tickets advertised on train station billboards. For travel within Austria the Spar Scheine ticket is from €9 as opposed to €19. (With flights from Dublin for €102 return (booked in October), total cost €140 for most trips!). A couple of times I had to pay €29 but if I had been prepared to wait longer at the airport or travelled earlier to the airport on the return, I could still have paid only €19.

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Spelling correction - SparSchiene as per OeBB website - but when I googled to check spelling , a lot of links had Spar Scheine, hence confusion! Still working on the Deutsch!

hilary t, I don't actually need to as I live close enough to the slopes and have my own car. But I think others may be very interested in finding out how to achieve those prices. Were they Munich Airport to specific resorts or to nearby towns with stations?

The Spar Scheine tickets usually mean you have to have one of the DB savings cards (BahnCard 25 or 50) doesn't it? Even living here, and using the trains quite often to get into Munich, I still have not found it worth the money for the card to be honest. I use the Bayern Ticket system as I often do not know that far in advance that I need to travel by train. The Bayern Tickets also include all the public transport in Munich as well (S- and U-Bahn as well as buses and trams)

You know it makes sense.

I would suggest Fieberbrunn in Tyrol (disclaimer: I live there Very Happy

). Fieberbrunn itself has cross-country loipe and Hochfilzen, just up the road has more. On the downhill side, Fieberbrunn itself is enjoyable but not a very large area. However, with the Schneewinkel ski pass you also have access to other areas like St. Johann in Tirol, Steinplatte/Waidring, etc., all accessible by ski bus. There are also other ski passes (Kitzbüheler Alpen AllStar Card, Salzburg Super Ski Card) which offer even wider areas but I think you would really need a car to benefit fully from them.

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

Some of the Canadian ski resort have XC, Silver Star with Sovereign lake give access to 105 Kilometres of trails. You could find enough to ski for a week you could book a days heli skiing from the resort.

Little Angel

A snowHead

Samerberg Sue,

A snowHead

hilary t, great information. I wish there were good, cheap, train connections to more French resorts. Though in some ways I don't..... the fact that our area is hard to get to probably helps keep it so quiet. There's really no practical alternative, for people who fly, to hiring a car. Taxis are extremely expensive and buses very difficult - infrequent, inconvenient with awkward changes and also pretty expensive. Visitors used to be able to get a bus from Gva to Albertville but for some reason that is now impossible - all the buses to the Tarentaise go through Albertville but don't stop there any more.

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skihippo, I am in the EXACT same situation.

Some places we have gone that worked well:
La Clusaz: excellent cross country, pretty good downhill, nice traditional village.
Davos/Klosters: excellent cross country and downhill. Expensive.
Bad Gastein: not a huge amount of cross country, but decent enough. Good downhill skiing. I like the town, some People don't.
Leogang: tons of cross country between Hochfilzen amd Saalfelden. Tons of downhill skiing liked in to Saalbach.
We also often stay in Garmisch, not so much because the skiing there is great but because you are within a 1 hour train-ride of both great cross country and downhill skiing.

From a purely cross country standpoint, Seefeld is about as good as you'll get in the Alps. You'll actually generally find better cross country trails in places with less imposing mountains (what makes the Alps great for downhill make them less than ideal for cross Country skiing). So there's great cross country skiing in the "other" mountains in Germany, Czech Republic and Scandinavia.

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For the Ski Amade region, Flachau would be a good choice as the X Country trails start right in the village. You will also have lots of downhill slopes to access easily from the village.

In the dolomites there is plenty of X country (close to 100km) on the Alpe Di Siusi plataeu as well as 60km of downhill slopes. And you can access all the downhill slopes in the Val gardena valley relatively easily.

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

musher, the XC area your wife bussed to near Banff was probably Canmore, where the '88 Olympic XC events were run, and now a national centre. Quite a pleasant little town to stay in, as well.

If France is your bag, then Chamrousse has some decent downhill and not bad XC, as does Villard de Lans. Of the two, the Vercors is better for XC (there are plenty of trails all over the massif), but I've not used Villard's downhill slopes since before they linked up with Correncon - someone on here returned a few weeks ago, however, and seemed to enjoy it.

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Many thanks everyone for your excellent recommendations. I realise that XC + Downhill in the same area don't mix terribly well in most places but you have given me plenty of different options to research over the coming weeks!

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

Seeing as we're in x-c mode, what's the x-c like in the Engadine valleys ? We've always gone to northern Finland or Washingston state where in both cases it's fairly remote and you can go some time without seeing other people so you get quite a feeling of actually being in the wilderness. However I am somewhat sceptical that you can get that sort of experience in Central Europe but I'm quite prepared to be proven otherwise. We don't want to go somewhere where there are lots of towns and hundreds of people on the trails so I'd be disappointed if I booked there and we didn't get "the getting away from it all" feeling. Therefore any advice on this aspect welcome.

After all it is free

dsoutar, are you looking for prepared trails? Presumably not, if you are looking for a "wilderness" experience?

dsoutar, we've skied in the Engadine and it is one of my favourite areas. It has a range of trails to suit all levels of skill and good transport connections to enable you to reach different areas or do a day trip and return by bus or train. This might not help you if you have not been there but for those contributors who have, I would say it is very similar to Seefeld. I think I know what you mean by the "wilderness" feeling having skied in Norway and Sweden and I would say that the trails have a very natural feeling rather than the "made for x-country" feeling you get in some resorts. You will be able to get away from the crowds and ski through some stunning scenery but it isn't the same feeling as you get in the Nordic areas. I would prefer Austria/Switzerland/Germany (it's the lovely little inns you come upon at just the right time for lunch or cakes!) but my husband would prefer the comparative isolation of Norway and Sweden. We've not tried some of the areas further east (other than a trip planned to a ski marathon in Poland that was cancelled because of poor snow- we went to Mora in Sweden instead) but know from the research we did for that trip that there are a lot of possibilities to explore.
The Engadine is a very good area for mixed downhill and x-c groups. Downhill is available at St Mortiz and a number of smaller ski area and the train gives an easy connections to Davos etc. the The disadvantage is it is pricey but there are some lovely villages such as Pontesina where it is possible to get more reasonable priced accommodation.

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dsoutar, what exactly is your comparision from Washington State. Something like the Methow Valley? Or something like MTTA trails? Or breaking trail down forrest service roads? You'll find plenty of the former in the Alps (village to village trails), but not much of the latter (wilderness xc trails, groomed or otherwise).

The Alps are much more densely populated than the Cascades, so you're going to struggle to find a comparable experience.

I haven't been to the Engadine, so can't comment on that specifically.

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Ami, thanks. I was referring to the Methow valley which we've been to 3 or 4 times. Although we love it it's far from being a cheap holiday. Given the the time change we go for at least 10 days and the only time we can do that is at Christmas so get clobbered for increased accomodation and flight costs. Adding in vehicle hire we don't get any change out of £4k.

I guess the cold hard fact is that if the area is densely populated then you're going to get a lot of people. Ah well, we might give it a try and as doing the Cresta run is on my bucket list it would work well with that. As long as we don't go there with unrealistic extectations I'm sure it would be fine. The other concern is the proximity of d-h facilities as we tend to split the x-c and d-h holidays and I'd hate to be tempted too much...

Anyway we're off to the area this summer (Val Mustair) so it might give me a chance to check out the area, albeit without any snow

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The SC trails in Les Saisies are certainly not densely populated - even in busy weeks they're deserted, in comparison to the downhill runs, though not in comparison with the Norwegian plateau, I daresay! If you can visit in low season (e.g. end of January) you will find it pretty quiet - especially on the more difficult (black) trails. 120kms of prepared trails, both classic and skating, almost all above 1650m.

I was in the Methow in January. It's a great place. It's also not exactly full-on wilderness and I think actually quite comparable with some areas in the Alps (maybe that's why it's been called the "American Alps"). A long valley with trails linking several villages.

We're looking at Lechtal in Austria for next winter, which looks pretty similar. Isolated valley with trails linking a string of villages. Not exactly breaking trail in virgin wilderness, but also not doing loops around a confined nordic center.

You know it makes sense.

ami in berlin, dsoutar, have a look at the trails around Spitzingsee/Schliersee/Bayerischerzell in Upper Bavaria - very much like those you describe in Washinton State. Might be a lot cheaper than Lechtal and more authentic? Another place where you can mix all types of skiing, although in a bad year the downhill is not the most exciting unless you can go ski touring.

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

Samerberg Sue, I've been meaning to get down that way (also to ski the Wallberg and Wendelstein). Will probably try to do as a long weekend next winter. I'd love to spend a week or two on a road trip around Oberbayern, but the snow is just too damn unreliable to plan it out in advance.

Lechtal isn't looking too expensive (not to be confused with Lech), and it's in a pretty isolated corner of Tyrol. So hopefully still quite authentic as well.

A snowHead

ami in berlin, I would not worry too much about the lack of snow - they seem to have a regular little snow-hole in that part of the Mangfall-Gebirge so that even in poor snow years, that little corner of Bayern is white! snowHead

OK Wendelstein is not always skiable, although this year it was mega, but Sudelfeld, Spitzingsee and Schliersee are all usually early openers and more than OK, even without artificial snow-making. I found out recently that the next area over from me (Aschau am Kampenwand) is also considered a premier Freeride area Shocked

Apparently an insider tip as it is cheap as chips and relatively quiet.

I think it was MikePow who wrote an excellent trip report about skiing in this area. If I remember correctly it was not exactly a "snow-rich" year when he explored the area either wink

A snowHead

Ooo. I didn't know about Kampenwand. Another one to add to the list. I love that Bavaria has these small cult areas. No way they can compete with Austria for the masses, better to offer something different.

I've read MikePow's report many times.

Anyway, this is getting too far off topic. Tiroler Zugspitzarena is another good area for for xc and downhill. Lots of trails between Ehrwald, Lermoos, and Bichelbach. Great (underrated) downhill skiing in Lermoos. Really good tree-skiing there. Zugspitze is easily accessable, too. I've heard the downhill skiing at Ehrwald is also good despite the resort being so small, but I haven't tried it myseld yet.

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What resorts/areas are good for both downhill and x-country please?

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