Yesterday had the makings of being one of the epic days of this winter. Plenty of fresh snow had fallen over the last few days, the weather and visibility had been pretty bad. The weather forecast was not great for yesterday either which should have kept the crowds away from the resorts.
The reality of the day was to be honest disappointing. I was in Flims/Laax at 9:15am still thinking a perfect powder day was on the cards. My first shock was the 67CHF ski ticket (plus deposit for chip card!) which is in my opinion a touch overboard. Through some pfaffing around and queuing in the valley-station it was 11am before we were actually on the mountain and ready to make some runs… along with many thousands of our best friends! The lift ques were long and the number of people on the pistes was borderline dangerous! So, we headed off the beaten track to find some untracked powder… This was pretty elusive. The resort had many lifts closed and those that had powder accessible were totally tracked out.
Crowds like this were not only at the tops of the lifts but continued to be an issue on the pistes!
At lunch time the self service restaurants were full with no possibility of getting seating so we had to go to one of the expensive restaurants, and after lunch there was a few more tracked out runs before taking heading down the valley where I was greeted with a 10CHF parking fee!
Putting this in context, Lenzerheide is another expensive and large resort in the same region but in my opinion offers better value for money.
- Ski Ticket 64CHF (52 if you buy in advance!)
- Parking 5CHF
- Lunch less then 20chf
There are at least 7 entry points to the mountain and the design of the resort reduces queuing to a minimum. On high avalanche risk days they bomb early in the morning so the whole resort is open by 10am.
- Ski Ticket 67CHF (No discount possibility that I am aware of)
- Parking 10CHF
- Lunch 50CHF (Due to all the self service restaurants being filled to capacity and not being able to get a seat.)
In Lenzerheide you get more skiing for your money hands down. In Elm which generally has the same weather as Flims/Laax you get even better value for money but granted have fewer lifts.
I always wonder what attracts people to certain resorts. Flumserberg seems to get stupidly crowded because of its proximity and access from Zurich, but for the size of the resort the tickets are expensive and on a sunny weekend day you will spend more time in the lift lines then you will actually skiing. Flims/Laax is another resort that gets ridiculously crowded on a sunny day and charges above the odds. I think the crowds go there because of the reputation it gets from having events like the Burton European Open etc, but the actually quality of skiing is no better then any of the other resorts in the area. The irony of this is that both of these ski regions have other resorts in very close proximity with equally good (or better) conditions and in some cases almost empty pistes!
Don’t get my wrong, Flims/Laax is not a bad resort, its just not any better then any other resort and in my opinion offers poor value for money and potentially large crowds if going for a days skiing.
The weather outlook for the week is for lots more snow with sunshine on Saturday.
