Saas Fee, Switzerland
Your views
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Tue 11 September 2007 mac
i spent a month in Saas which is a cool place with a good choice of bars with Happy bar and Popcorn by far the best, You will find local resident Fredi Kalbermatten djing at Popcorn, which is also a great board shop during the day for other shopping check out Wildone Boardshop. Saas Fee is quite a small resort which means you can get a bit bored with the runs but off-piste is a big no-no here due to the glaciers ,you can visit Saas Grund & Saas Almagal but Saas Fees saving grace is the awesome parks that offer everything a boarder could wish for.
Welcome To a Carvers Paradise
Fri 10 March 2006 Speed Freak
We went here in the beginning of January 2006. That mean't it was pretty cold (-20C) but it was empty and not a single queue all week at the lifts. The village is car free so you have to get electric 'johnny cabs' everywhere. In general, it's pretty expensive here but hunt around, but you can find cheap food but don't expect to eat in! The lift system is well organised and gets you up the mountain fast. There's also a train to get to the very top - it goes through the mountain at quite a steep angle giving the skiers a hard time in their boots.
From the village, the view to the Fee Glacier in the sun is just stunning. It glistens blue, but that's nothing compared to the night time with a full moon.
Because the Fee mountain has a glacier, if look down as you go up on the gondala, you can see lovely big crevasses waiting to swallow you up if you stray off-piste. Get advice if you've never been on a glacier before. Get to the 3600m summit and off you blast. Lush long wide reds/blacks with steep sections to power down. The food up there isn't cheap either. We took food with us on the first day, but it was hard as steel by lunchtime. We stopped laughing at the till.
Saas Grund - what a mountain. You get there by bus for free (included in your lift pass). Go to the top, take the right fork out of the gondala and get ready for a seriously good ride. We passed the park on the way down which isn't that much to wirte about, but due to the huge grins on our faces, we couldn't care less. Just don't take the last section down the base. It might be red on the map, but it's really a toboggan run. Our friends will vouch for it!
If you want to learn for the first time, the schools are well organised but start on Mondays. The area is excellent to learn on and you start well out of the way of everyone else.
Apart from the cost of eating (not to mention supermarkets), we really rated this place. Top runs for carvers and a bonus for snowboarders - we only used gondalas all week - no chairs or T-bars. We'll be back for summer sometime for sure.
Mon 12 January 2004 chloe
i LOVE this resort! so much im going to spend both a winter and summer season there next year! its picture perfect, car free, has a nice variety of slopes, a friendly village atmosphere and one hell of a snowpark! last year it had an old cable car with djs&huge loadspeakers providing a wicked soundtrack to bust moves in the (beautifully crafted) pipe by. they also had sofas to chill on! how boarder friendly is that! ive heard the back country is brill but have never ventured that far myself. it gets the approval of local Fredi Kalbermatten and his other pro snowboarder mates (the fine) JP Solberg, Nicolas Mueller, Romain de Marchi and Gigi Ruef which cant be bad! the snowboard school is great, the instructors are all young, friendly and gorgeous! By night the best place to be is around Popcorn which plays good music (rare in switzerland) till the early hours, has a great atmosphere and is full of boarders! If you fancy something a little more chilled, then the Living Room has a cool eclectic feel and is above Popcorn in the Hotel Dom (another little, if 'quirky', gem of a hotel). Foodwise, other than fondue and roesti, boccalinos do a good pizza! all in all its a gorgeous little resort and thankfully isn't over run with brits or hooray henrys like its neighbour zermatt (nothing against zermatt, i like it). the only tiny tiny tiny problem is the amount of really advanced runs of which there aren't many, but its not major. its quite expensive, but worth it if you save up. NB the good nursery slopes are brilliant for learning, but make it popular with families. The journey up is really exciting, you wind your way up a cliffside on a bus and can see the mountains ahead and the clouds below behind you! ah, i love it, hope you do to.
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Resort Statistics
Resort Type:
Alpine
Winter: Nov to April
Summer: None
Lifts
Total Lifts: 22
Cable cars: 7
Chair lifts: 2
Drag lifts: 13
Other lifts: 1 Cable Railway
Max people per hour: 23,490
Board Leashes required: No
Mountain
Total pistes/trails: 40
Total ride area: 100km
Longest run: 9km
Top lift: 3600m
Vertical drop: 1800m
First lift: 1800m
Piste suitability
Green runs: 50%
Red runs: 25%
Black runs: 25%
Lift Passes
Lift Passes:
1/2 day 52 CHF
1 day pass 63 CHF
5 day pass 273 CHF
Lift times:8.30am to 4.30pm
Snowfall
Average annual snowfall: 2.7m
Artificial snowmaking coverage: 5%
Facilities
Night Riding: :
Thursdays 8 to 10pm in Saas-Balen
Tuesdays 7 to 9:45pm in Furggstalden
Snowboard Schools:
Several options. www.skischule-saas-fee.ch runs group lessons for 53 CHF per day and private for 60 CHF per hour
Heliboarding: :
Yes
Snowmobiles:
Not available
Further information


