Area: | Flims-Laax |
Base: | 1100m |
Summit: | 3020m |
Skiable vertical: | 1900m |
Lifts: | 24 (6 draglifts) |
Slope orientation: | Southeast-facing |
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You can start either from Flims or from Laax - both are served by post bus from Chur. Traffic on this route can be quite awful though, so treat timetables in peak season with scepticism. On the SBB website, look for "Flims Dorf, Bergbahnen" for Flims, or for Laax use "Laax GR, Murschetg". Both these buses drop you right outside the lifts.
From Zürich, take the hourly train to Chur and change to one of the connecting post buses. Total time anywhere between about 2h and 2h30, although the return journey can sometimes take 3h30. The "Snow and Rail" ticket (available from the machines) including train and lift pass costs CHF 82 with halbtax, but beware of the CHF 5 ticket scam once you get to the resort.
Laax has an interesting approach to the "Snow and Rail" tickets - they provide a special "Express Schalter" outside the building for a speedy ticket purchase, rather than forcing you to join the enormous queues inside. Bizarrely, however, after you've queued up here to exchange your Gutschein for your lift ticket, (after already having paid them), they refuse (saying it's a special price) and make you queue up in the enormous queues inside anyway! Talk about customer service. But wait! It gets better! You can't just get a normal paper ticket, because they don't do normal paper tickets at Flims. Instead they only have plastic hands-free cards. The special twist at Flims is that they refuse to take them back at the end of the day and give you your deposit back, like other resorts do. No, they insist that you buy the card for CHF 5! Incredible! This is after they only open four counters for the massive queues as well. Maybe they're just trying to be unpleasant to their customers??
If you're not coming with a "Snow and Rail" ticket, a day pass by itself will cost you CHF 60 in high season. If you have a GA, you can buy a discounted ticket from the station before you take the train. Either way you still have the CHF 5 ticket scam. Oh, and don't forget, the card they forced you to buy will set off every beeper at every ski resort you go to afterwards, if you leave it in your jacket. If you take it out of your jacket, they'll force you to buy another one next time you go to Flims. If you want to put up with their appalling service a second time, that is.
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An amazingly huge area is covered, with a good variety of runs and very large vertical drop (3000m down to 1100m). With that amount of drop, there's always going to be something suitable, whether fast blues up on the glacier, or tricky yellows (steep unprepared routes) lower down, or virtually anything inbetween. Any lift system this size is going to have difficulties with getting from one place to another, but there are a few bottlenecks. For example, getting up to La Siala requires either a nasty traverse from Vorab or a congested chair lift from Scansinas (finally upgraded from a drag lift!). However, a lot of effort has gone into the naming and signing of the runs, making navigation easier. The map used to conveniently mark flatter traverses as 'less suitable for snowboarders' in orange but sadly not any more. Early lift closure (some lifts closing as early as 3:30!) is very disappointing.
Overcrowding is a serious problem here on a sunny day, so recommendations have to take account of the chronic lifts. For example, runs on the far West side to Alp Ruschein are almost deserted, and offer plenty of off-piste soft, but the unbelievable queues for the appallingly slow lift make this one to avoid. Morning queues for the Curnius chairlift (Curnius - Crap Sogn Gion) and the Crap Sogn Gion cable car (Laax Murschetg - Crap Sogn Gion) are similarly crushing. Some of the least painful spots are around Fuorcla, using the lifts Vorab I (Fuorcla - Crap Masegn) and Vorab II (Fuorcla - Vorab). The runs around the Plaun lift (Plaun - Crap Sogn Gion) are also relatively light.
For somewhere that hypes up its cool snowboarding image, Flims/Laax has very little in the way of terrain parks. There's a pair of immaculate halfpipes just underneath Crap Sogn Gion, under the Curnius lift, and a selection of brutal metal rails and bars, but very little for the average rider. Under the Nagens lift (Scansinas - Nagens), is a fairly half-hearted attempt at a bordercross course, but the rest is left to natural bumps and jumps.
One excellent place for that natural terrain is undereneath La Siala, on the area marked yellow on the map. Amazing acreage of soft off-piste, and although care is obviously required, the terrain is open and the rocks pretty visible, making it difficult to get stuck. Well worth exploring.
On piste maps a few years ago, the flat runs are marked in orange on the map - an excellent idea, and very useful. Sadly they stopped doing this for some reason, so now for example the run from La Siala to Vorab is marked as a red even though it's got some serious uphill bits. Also note the run from Crap Masegn to Crap Sogn Gion is irritatingly flat, but you can take the red run down to Plaun instead.
This resort seems to be a victim of its own popularity. From the traffic problems getting to the resort, to the interminable queues to exchange your tickets, to lift queues of more than 20 minutes, and the slow lifts themselves, adds up to a wearying day out. The very early closure of the lifts is another face-slapper.
On a quiet weekday this huge resort would no doubt be a dream, but on a sunny Saturday or Sunday you can forget it. Given the price of the tickets, some investment in the lifts would go a long way. Somehow you get the feeling that this place just isn't quite as cool as it likes to think it is.
4 March 2007 - glorious sunshine and unbelievable soft snow, especially under the La Siala lift. The horrendous lift queues, customer unfriendliness and early lift closures (and rude bus drivers) sour the atmosphere somewhat.
13 December 2003 - there is snow, but they could really do with some more. Only a handful of lifts are open (mainly the area from Plaun up to the top of the Vorab Gletscher), but what is open is on the whole well-covered. Hopefully more snow is on the way, which will allow the crowds to be spread out a bit more. There's a jump and rail park on the glacier, in good condition.
The website is at alpenarena.ch, with an excellent lift map well hidden away in the menus. Snow conditions are at snow-forecast.com.
