Ski-topia 2012

So it is Christmas, and as usual no vacation has been booked for 2012.  The plan has been in place for a while, but nothing was booked until now.  This year finds us with excess vacation so a two week ski vacation around the Eastern Alps has been planned.  The big question is: Is there going to be enough snow?

Lake Placid NY, Host 1932 & 1980

This is the only Winter Olympic venue within driving distance of my home. I actually went here for a weekend once; a large portion of it was spent driving.  Although it isn't (for me) as exotic or has the cultural differences that the other venues do, I have to admit, I like it.   I have been here three times but only for short periods.  On one visit I got the Winter Olympic Passport, which is  good value, this includes admission or discounts to most of the 1980 venues which are largely still intact.  I wanted to try the bobsled but it was not operating because it was "too cold".  Too cold!?!  I remember it being pretty damn cold (-25C ish), but bobsledding is a winter sport.  It is like saying the grass on a pitch is too green to play football.  My one regret is not doing some cross country skiing while I was there too.  You can go up the ski jumping tower, there is a great view of the surrounding area and looking down the slope gives you a lot more respect for the athletes who are brave enough to do the sport.   The town itself is small and quaint and there are a variety of places to stay.  From dodgey motels to the Hilton.

Ski Jumping Towers

On-Piste: Silver


It is true, Whiteface (the skiing venue) has earned its nickname Iceface.  I have encountered, icy, or hard packed snow conditions every time I have been here.  It has also been extremely cold (-35C at the summit) and windy when I have been there.  Fairweather (West Coast) skiers should certainly think twice about going.  But the mountain is quite large especially by East Coast standards with 1085m (3430') of vertical, the largest on the East Coast of North America.

A view of Whiteface

The runs are quite challenging,  blues and black diamonds are the norm.  There are a few gladed runs and moguls which add variety.  It takes about 20-30 minutes to ski the entire mountain from top to bottom.   I think if I was here for an entire week I would get a bit bored, but it certainly holds my attention for three days. Another bonus is the lack of lift lines. Compared to Tremblant, they are almost non existant. Somedays it feels like you have the whole mountain to yourself. I think I might have to go back sometime in the next few years and reassess my on-piste rating after skiing some of the mountains in Europe.

Off-piste:  Bronze


Unfortunately, the feeling of having the mountain to yourself sometimes extends to the town too. There are some nice restaurants in town.  I remember having some good meals in Charlies, for some reason I remember having a particularly good soup there on one occasion.  The pubs are generally pretty quiet, however, to be fair, I have not been there on a weekend, but compared to Europe, Lake Placid may as well have tumbleweed blowing through it.

Overall Bronze

Marc Says  Don't get me wrong, it is great having such a large mountain in driving distance, and it is great for 3-4 day trips. But, to be honest it is small potatoes compared to some of the interlinked resorts of Europe.

Nagano, Host 1998

You heard it here first: Japan is going to be the hot new ski destination for the 21st Century.  My first perceptions of skiing in Japan probably were based upon stories from the height of the Japanese bubble economy of the 90’s.  I thought it would be extremely expensive and the slopes crowded with 30 minute lift lines,.. no wait that is the reality at Blue Mountain, Ontario. The truth is, skiing in Japan was just the opposite: negligible lift lines, lots of snow, great food and it wasn’t all that expensive.

I arrived in Narita early in the morning and Mike’s flight, arriving 8 hours later, was delayed by an hour meaning that we missed the last train to Nagano.  So we booked some tickets on the Haku bus.  In the end it is probably the best way to get from Narita to Nagano as you avoid having to navigate through Tokyo with your skis and we got service right to the hotel door. We stopped at a service centre on the way where there were cakes and random gift-wrapped confections of every description.

We arrived at the Yamano hotel late in the evening.  The hotel room was very spacious and we wisely opted for half board.  We were served Western breakfasts and the Japanese supper was always excellent.  Monaca San looked after us well; highly recommended.

The hotel was located right across the street from the Olympic ski jumping stadium and a 200m walk to Happo One ski resort.  Apparently I was incorrectly calling it Happo 1 for the majority of the trip until I was told it was pronounced Happo oh nay. It had recently rained when we arrived but there was still plenty of snow.

Shinkasen

We had a day trip on the train to Matsumoto which is a fairly large city and toured a Japanese castle.  Of course we didn’t travel all this way to avoid Tokyo so we took a Shinkasen for 2 hours and were in the centre of Tokyo, with our ski gear.  We found our hotel and explored this massive urban jungle. Tokyo is like the intensity and energy of New York with the quirkiness of London multiplied by 10.  The food in Japan is excellent, I don’t think we had a bad meal while we were there.  A reoccurring game on the trip was “surprise me” where we would buy a random beverage from the numerous 7-11s.  The ideal drink would be one where it could not be easily determined what the contents were inside the can due to lack of English (there were plenty of drinks that met this criteria).  If the challenger could not finish the drink, they had to pay for it.

Tokyo BBQ Alley

Skiing: Silver

The skiing here was quite good, the lift lines were non existent  and there was a variety of trails, but they weren't numerous.  The vertical was  1000m.  On Happo One there seemed to be numerous runs with moguls, not many wide open groomer trails.  At Hakuba 47 there was an excellent terrain park, and more wide open trails, well maintained trails good for carving. The border-cross course was a lot of fun too.  Both ski areas are quite large.  The conditions were okay, it was obvious this place gets a lot of snow but it was pretty icy when we were there.  The rain probably didn't help.  The food on the hills was great too, nothing beats a giant bowl of udon for lunch on the slopes.  In complete contrast to France, there were no opportunities for off-piste skiing.

Off-piste: Bronze

The jet lag had taken its toll on us but on the two occasions we ventured out in search of apres ski and we were unsuccessful.  We may have been totally ignorant and looking in the wrong places but we had no luck.  The base area around the lifts seemed to close when the lifts did.  We were told Echo Land is where it's at. Hakuba seemed quite spread out so we had to walk a fair bit (20 mins) to get to Echo Land, we could not find any bar that had anything significant going on, the place was deserted.  We went to the large Cherry Pub for a beer but were the only people in it.   It probably didn't help that we were there during the weekdays.  All is not lost though, the lack of nightlife in Hakuba is more than made up for by the nightlife in Tokyo.

Overall: Silver

Marc says: "It's Japan, what's not to like?  Very friendly people, insanely fast trains and just an overall unique experience.  The food was also amazing, you must find a hotel with half board and good food, we were lucky with the Yamano. It goes without saying; great sushi in Tokyo.    Skiing was good but I imagine it can be really good with fresh snow. The place get 4-10m of snowfall a year, too bad it didn't decide to fall while we were there."

Albertville, Host 1992

So after having such a great time in Chamonix and not having to go to work for a few more days, we decided to extend the ski trip by 3 more days and go skiing Val D'Isere, a very scenic 90 minute drive from Chamonix.  On the way to Val D'Isere we stopped off in the 1992 host town Albertville.  It was quite small, not a whole lot going on but nice enough. Unless you were a tourist with a strange obsession of former Olympic sites, there was not much reason to stop here. Of course, we did check out the Olympic museum which was full of memorabilia and crazy French costumes from the Olympics.

This Olympics had a lot of venues spread out over a wide area.  We decided to go to Val D'Isere ski resort because it hosted the Men's alpine events, while nearby Les Tines hosted freestyle skiing. Meribel, in the next valley over, hosted the women's skiing but we did not have time to go there.

The newly developed part of Albertville Town Centre

While in Albertville, we also checked out the Olympic Park which has the mast used in the opening ceremony, the Olympic Cauldron and arena where the short track speed skating and figure skating took place.  The arena looks like it has seen better days now.

Olympic Arena and Cauldron

We stayed at a small Logis hotel (great for inexpensive lodging in France), the food was not as good as the Excelsior in Chamonix, but adequate.  It was difficult to find a place to stay in Val D'Isere that offered lodging at nightly rates, and at a reasonable price it seemed it all had to be done by the week.

On-piste Experience: Gold


Wow, what can I say, skiing at Val D'Isere was incredible, there are lifts everywhere and bar some of the larger cable cars in the morning the lift lines were not bad.  We took this mini TGV funicular thing up to the top of the mountain, it looks like it was built for the Olympics, and this thing moved.  It was like taking a subway to work, but in your ski gear.   The Skiable terrain here is massive, it is linked to another ski area, Les Tines to form the Espace Killey and our pass was good for both.  To get from one end of the ski area to another took about 2 hours, and we still hadn't made it to the far end of Les Tines!  We needed at least two more days to explore the skiable area. There was a wide variety of runs, Mike enjoyed carving on the blues while I tried the Olympic Downhill run and reds.

The "TGV" Funicular thing

The Olympic Downhill run is tough, I can't believe the skiers bombed down it!  It was more challenging that the Downhill runs I previously did in Nagano or Lake Placid. I think for FIS events, they use an easier red run.  I took me 5+ mins to do the run and the athletes did it under 2mins I think.   The conditions were good, but got icy towards the end of the day. We found an unofficial jump on the first day where I tried to pull some wicked eighties freestyle moves.  I managed to pull off a back-scratcher but failed massively on the Daffy.  The terrain park had some huge jumps, but I  didn't see anyone brave enough to go off the black rated jump; it looked outright suicidal.  There is plenty of off-piste skiing too but we had enough pistes to explore to keep us occupied for the day.

The weather there was great: not too cold, loads of sun and not too warm to cause any melting.  The only complaint was the food on the hill was really expensive and of low quality.  On the second day we went to the base and into town where I had the best quiche of my life and some great pastries, still pricey though.

Apres Ski: Gold


Unlike Chamonix, which was older, this was a purpose built resort, complete with very expensive shops selling designer mountain wear.  Most of the gear was way too expensive, and too pretentious for me to consider buying.  There were a lot of restaurants and pubs to enjoy on the main drag, but they didn't seem as cozy as the ones in Chamonix and I imagine they were expensive  We went to the Moris Pub, which had live music (an Irish singer); it was good fun.  For clubbers there is the Folie Douce right on the slopes, it seems things kick off their at 3pm.  It kind of reminded me of the student union and Ministry of Sound  slopeside, I think it is aimed to a crowd who is age is not as advanced as mine.  I think generally the apres ski here is more boisterous and probably slightly more expensive than Chamonix, but there certainly isn't a shortage of things to do when the lifts stop.  Val D Isere is not for people who pinch pennies, fortunately for people who do there is St. Bourg 30 minutes down the road where we went one night, we had a great pizza in a pizzeria in a strip, the waitress looked like Tina Turner who had cosmetic surgery gone wrong, but it was probably half the price of a pizza in Val D'Isre.  There are also very authentic French drinking establishments in this town.

Il Folie Douce

Overall: Gold


Marc Says:  "This is probably the best ski experience I have ever had. It isn't cheap but worth it the extra price.  The lift system is great, conditions were great too with a wide variety of runs and challenges.  Can't complain. I wish I had more time here to explore the runs, do some off-piste skiing and experience more apes ski."

Chamonix: Host, 1924

The main trip for 2011 took us to Chamonix in the Savoy region of France.  This is where the Winter Olympics began (retroactively) in 1924.  It was originally called the International Winter Sports Week and then was awarded Olympic status at an Olympic Committee  meeting two years later.

Les Houches

I was tasked with securing a ski vacation somewhere in Europe for a week.  Getting half-board was such a success at Nagano, we decided to do it again.  It was Christmas and a vacation still wasn't booked, due to an abundance of faffing.  I was debating wether to book independently directly through the hotel or through a British Tour operator.  For simplicity sake, I went through an operator, I think we paid slightly more.  We have board, your accommodation options are a bit more limited, we settled upon the Excelsior Hotel, located 5km from Chamonix in the village of Les Tines.  I honestly didn't know too much about Chamonix, or what to expect when we got there.  Fortunately we made a good decision to rent a car for this trip.

Stade Olympique then (1924)...

....Stade Olympique now (2011) 

We got the Mont Blanc Unlimited pass, which allowed us to go to Verbier, Coumeyer in addition to the hills in the Chamonix Valley.

Chamonix is an old style mountain town, not a purpose built resort like Whistler and Val D'Isere, which I thought was a plus.  There is lots to do, and there aren't super expensive ski apparel clothes stores in the bottom of hotels everywhere you go.

Apparently it was a really bad year for snow.  It hadn't snowed for 3 weeks when we arrived.  The locals were complaining but being hard-core on piste East Course North American skiers, the icy/ hard packed conditions suited us fine.  Powder?  What's that again?

We skied in the Chamonix Valley for a total of 4 days, we went to Verbier, Switzerland and Courmeyer, Italy both were fantastic but aren't included in this review.

On-Piste: Silver 


We experienced a lot of excellent smaller ski areas.  Smaller is a relative term to Verbier and Val D'Isere, they are still big enough they require a full days worth of skiing to explore all the areas.   We had no lift lines.  The lifts were okay, some resorts had an abundance of Poma lifts(by North American standards). Compared to larger European resorts there weren't quite as much high speed lifts.   Les Houches, a good place to start your trip, has 900m of vertical and is mostly forested, Les Grand Montets has a vertical of 2000m and is more challenging.  Les Tour has lots of wide open intermediate groomer runs, good for carving.

Relaxing at Le Tour

The resorts seemed to be fairly old and dotted with chalets that served Vin Chaud for about 3 Euros which was always welcome. Skiing in Europe is definitely a more laid-back affair when compared to the New World. Time skiing was matched with an equal amount of time relaxing in a chalet with vin chaud, cafe or lunch. The beach chairs were great to relax on in the surprisingly warm sun.

  The conditions weren't too bad and the challenge of the piste generally depended on the resort area.  There is a lof of variety so you wouldn't get bored in a week here.  It seems in France the pistes are a suggestion so you can ski just about anywhere after a fresh snow.  But it hadn't snowed  for a while so the off-piste sections were really rutty, we tended to stay between the trail markers where they were freshly groomed.  Most of the skiing is done above the tree line. Conditions we experienced could be better, snow was certainly not abundant at lower elevations.

The main problem with Chamonix is that the hills are spread out through the valley and require you to drive or take a shuttle bus to the base of the mountain.  There is no ski-in or ski out.  We had a car so this wasn't too much of a problem but I could see it being a pain waiting for the bus every morning.  The resorts here do not have the variety that the mega resorts of Val D'Isere.  Apparently when there is lots of snow, the off piste skiing is phenomenal.

For 75 Euros you can take a guided trip down the world's longest 22km ski run the Valle Blance.  I was about to do it but talked myself out of it, due to confidence issue,  when the guide said you have to do the blacks no problem, I fell once of the blacks so in my mind that was me done.  Oh well, next time!

Off Piste Gold 


Chamonix has a good Apres ski especially for the late 20 thirty something crowd.  Chambre Neuf quickly became our favourite.  The band, which would play 90's rock would take to the stage at 1700 and be done at 1900.  Fairly loud, but good fun. Anyone who knows me well, knows that this is my kind of night out finished by 2000.   There were also quieter drinking establishments in town and one night we went for a fantastic fondue at a restaurant down the road in Argentiere, but got ripped off with a 3 minute 30 Euro cab ride.  Our hotel was 10 minutes outside Chamonix and the last train/bus was at 2030 which could cause some logistical issues if you want to make it a late night.  At our hotel, hotel Excelsior, we had fantastic French cuisine.  I have a major weakness for croissants, so having them for breakfast and looking out to fantastic views of the alps every morning, I was in Alpine heaven.

At the hotel bar we also discovered Le Biere Vert, it is a green, beer based drink that is infused with Genipi extract that comes from local plants and herbs, very refreshing highly recomended.  


During the day there is also lots to do, you can tack the Mer de Glace railway to see the Glacier or go up the cable car to Mont Blanc or do some shopping in Mont Blanc.

Brevent & Flegere

Overall Gold


Marc Says: It was a great trip, not much left in terms of Olympic infrastructure, but what a suitable home for the first Winter Olympics.  The skiing was superb, food excellent and apres ski fun, but not too rowdy.  If I could do it again, I would probably stay in Chamonix town centre, the only problem is we miss out on the good food at the Excelsior. Stunning scenery, the Alps around here are very majestic and ragged. The Olympics may once again return here after a 94 year hiatus as part of the 2018 Annecy bid. I know which bid I support for the 2018 Olympics: go Annecy!

Welcome to the Olympic Ski Blog

Hello, this is my first foray into the blog-o-sphere.  My friend, Mike and I have decided to try and ski at every town/resort that has hosted the Winter Olympics since 1924.  I don't know really when we decided to do this.  I think the idea came after we went on the trip to Nagano Japan (where the 1998 Olympics were hosted) when we realized that we skied about 3 venues each.  So why stop there?

On this journey I hope we get to experience different cultures that are united with by one thing: a passion for great skiing and making the most out of winter.

At some former host cities, alpine events were held at multiple resorts, we will try to visit all of them but if budgets and time does not allow, we will try and ski at the resort that hosted the men's downhill as we are men and we like to ski downhill. I also hope to give some insight what we experienced both on and off the slopes.