Crans Montana

I went skiing in Crans Montana from Jan 24th to Jan 31st

Initially, the plan had been to drive down there and visit Champagne on the way back, but we wanted to get back in time for the Dinner-Dance party at work, so we flew back early on Sat 31st.

I was sharing a chalet with Peter & Amy Lenk, Joe, Natasha & Tommy and Theo. There were also other friends in Montana: Karola, Koen & Ann, Peter van der Pouw & Jeanette, Roger & Pinar w/kids and Roger's parents.

Saturday we got up early to fly down to Geneva to go to Crans Montana. The flight took a lot longer than we expected, since they closed down the airport at Geneva due to "Weather". We flew to Zurich instead, waited for an hour on the tarmac, re-fueled the plane and flew to Geneva. Upon getting there, I noticed they had about 3 cm of snow on the ground there. Obviously they had no snow-clearing equipment or something. I found the whole closing-business ridiculous. Already late in getting to Crans, we took the train to Sierre, managed to get off at the wrong station, had to wait for the next train, and then, upon getting to Sierre, the funicular up the mountain was broken, so we had to do the long bus-trip around.



Sunday morning we went to the ground station at Grand Signal to buy tickets and rent skis. There were long lines and poor service, and in the end I got crappier equipment than I had last year at Laax. There had been several days of snow leading up to our arrival, so there was plenty of snow in the slopes, although there were also lots of moguls on the first day. Freakin' snowboarders!

Monday was the only day without brilliant sunshine, so we had really good weather for five out of six days. In the evening we had a wine tasting at a local winemaker, in their basement. We tasted lots of different types of wine, and by the end of the evening, we had tasted almost 2 bottles each, according to the guy hosting the event. Unfortunately, by the time we finished, there were no taxis to take us back to our chalet. Luckily, the guy hosting offered to take us home in his pick-up. Peter Lenk opted to sit on the truck bed to make sure nothing happened to the boxes of wine we had back there. Naturally, the next morning we had a very late start in getting up to the pistes.




We had most of our lunches at the restaurant at Bella Lui. We had split up into several groups, so we usually had a plan to meet up there at a set time. Unfortunately, some people had time management problems, and others wanted to do other pistes, so more often than not it took a lot of time to meet up with other people. Also, due to planning problems and people changing their minds, we spent lots of time waiting, so we did less skiing than the previous years.

Peter Lenk, Joe and Peter van der Pouw were really into off-piste, so they spent a lot of time off the sides of the main piste. For the most part, I didn't join them, since I'm not a very good skier, and I feel I need to build up more technique before going into all that loose snow. There were lots of snow, though, so conditions were good for playing around on the edges.

Resort-wise, I thought Crans Montana had pretty old infrastructure compared to other sites I have been to. We also spent a lot of time in gondolas, so it took quite some time to get up to the really good parts. Also, some chairlifts had design problems. dripping melted snow on the head and neck of the people on the outermost seats when it was sunny.

The ski food wasn't all that great, and they seemed to have very few self-service cafes. That meant lunches took longer, and I must say I enjoyed the food in Laax last year more. Laax was also cheaper. On the plus side, they had lots of places to get Vin Chaude on the piste.



Evenings were spent having dinner and reading for the most part. Not really a lot of after-ski in this resort. We did manage to have a pasta night with the traditional champagne tasting at the chalet. Peter made really good home-made pasta, and Theo cooked up a huge pot of his special pasta-sauce.

Friday evening we celebrated the end of the ski trip at a fairly good Italian restaurant downtown. We didn't stay too long, though, as we needed to get up really early to make our flights back. The trip back was uneventful, except for an unpleasant taxi ride from Schiphol (guy refused to drop us off where we needed to go - that's Dutch service for you...), so we made it back to the Dinner-Dance.

Pictures are here