Flims Laax Falera 6 Day Snow Forecast

JB from United Kingdom writes:

Been in Laax for almost a week. What the other reviews say (at least the more recent ones) is true. It has been snowing for the past 2 days, but more than half the lifts have been closed today (around 80% closed yesterday).

Me and husband are snowboarders - low to average intermediates (depending on fitness!). We chose Laax because it is heavily marketed as a boarders resort. Which it is if you are a teenager who wants to play in the park and on the half pipe all day. There are also some designated off-piste runs which I'm sure are fun (if the lifts are open to get you up there!)

But the pistes have been in a horrible state all week. There had been loads of fresh snow for several days before we arrived but I guess they don't bother grooming them here, because any of the decent reds were full of huge piles of snow, with attendant icy patches and even some bits of grass showing through - which put paid to my carving practice! Also - pretty much all the "easier" runs are in actual fact cat tracks - narrow, flat - yuk! Fine if you are on skis I suppose.

I guess we were expecting the quality of places like Saalbach in Austria with those lovely wide motorways down the mountain, or any of the places we've been to in France or Italy - but the pistes instead are badly kept and often very narrow.

And the final kicker is how eye wateringly expensive it is here. A day pass is around 60 euros, 6 days around 300e (in Italy it's usually around 45 to 50 for a day, 200 to 250 for a week). We wanted to have a couple of lessons so we could exploit the off-piste but no way at around 180euros a time! (for 2 hours, 2 people. In Cervinia, Italy for eg this same lesson would cost around 80 euros.) For lunch a sausage and a bit of bread will set you back around 10 euros - anything more filling and you are looking at 18e and up. All the restaurants in town are the same. Dinner was routinely upwards of 75e for two, just the cheapest mains and a drink.
To sum up. We've made the most of being here - the amount of snow has been amazing, we've also been hiking and toboganning, and we resorted to apres-ski bought at the supermarket and drunk in our hotel room! But there are hundreds of other resorts around Europe that offer massively better value for money, better variety of pistes (especially for beginners and the less confident snowboarder) and much better kept pistes too.

I hope this review proves helpful for someone!

2012-01-05