I would ha e to agree @T28 it’s been an amazing year so far even though it is tour skiing this side of the border. We may not have the vaccine but boy do we have the powder.
Though we’ve had rain and Fohn – or “la bise” (the kiss) as they call it here, what a difference 2 days make…
From here
I’ve been there too but at my level (beginner/intermediate perhaps) the scenery far exceeds the skiing One has to “do” these places (same with Zermatt, Courchevel, etc) because everybody talks about them, but for great skiing, which includes the ability to be right at the front of the lift queue when it opens
Being at the front of the queue is only dependent on when you wake up…
Yesterday’s timings actually surprised me as I thought I had wasted a lot more time wondering how to pack my bag. 7h30 breakfast, 8h35 gondola, 9h20 top of Theodul.
Mid-run
Panoramic view of the morning runs
Tuesday’s run along the foot of the mountain
Finally, after almost 10 years of trying 
a EuroGA fly to ski did happen – at Aosta LIMW to Cervinia.
We had three aircraft turn up. Should have been a lot more but as usual these things are hard to organise, a few people got fogged in at their base, and some just dropped out.
LIMW really does work great. One of the most friendly airports I have ever been to – on the scale of Mali Losinj LDLO and a very few others. For UK pilots there is the benefit of a short flight of around 3hrs; LIMW must be the Italian airport closest to the UK.
You can get a taxi to Cervinia for around €100, although the drivers like to “lift that a little” 
Other locations are a similar distance e.g. the Monte Rosa ski area.
Cervinia offers mostly red runs but they are easy for anyone who can parallel ski. There are also some blues, and a learning slope, so it is fine for initial lessons too. It isn’t a “black run central”; for that you need the Swiss Alps Of course every skier you meet is expert-level so one has to treat ski resort recommendations with great caution. I started only 6 years ago, aged almost 60 then, so I am definitely not one of these, and never will be. And many skiers go to the same resort all the time and tell everybody it is the best… I’ve done about 15, I think, and Cervinia is the best of them.
The airport is dead easy to get into; this is long final RWY 27
This is a fairly typical Cervinia run. Red, well groomed, and you can go as slowly or as fast as you like
A lot of locations are full of this sort of stuff which is basically dangerous; for a nice accident, all you need is some people standing around, and some are notorious for groups sitting all over the slope
It would be great if another meet-up could be done again this winter.
After our Aosta/Cervinia fly-in I checked near-by ski resorts and this reconfirmed LIMW as a great starting point for fly-to-ski. Courmayeur and Chamonix are quite close with regular bus schedule from Aosta at very low price. Although €200 for taxi (to Cervinia and back) is not so big in the great cost scheme, €10 for bus sounds great Even renting car at Aosta sounds reasonable although you don’t actually need it except for reaching ski resort. The only problem is that rental car office doesn’t work on Sunday so you have to plan avoiding Sunday as arrival/departure day.
Emir wrote:
Even renting car at Aosta sounds reasonable although you don’t actually need it except for reaching ski resort. The only problem is that rental car office doesn’t work on Sunday so you have to plan avoiding Sunday as arrival/departure day.
There are often pick-up and drop-off arrangements for the days when they are closed, so it’s worth investigating.
When I used to ski regularly (mainly France), hiring a car was my preferred way of getting up the mountain from the airport (often Chambery or Grenoble). As you say it isn’t used apart from the trip up the mountain and back down again, but it used to cost less than EUR150 for the week and gave you flexibility as well as a much shorter transit time than any bus could manage. You could escape the airport quickly and be away on the autoroute at 130kph, meaning you were ahead of the ‘transfer day’ traffic on the mountain and arrived in time for half a day’s skiing. Those using a bus tended to arrive a few hours later, just as the sun was going down.
Most of my planning of ski trips focused on how to avoid wasting a whole day on travelling. The usual packages from the UK (with bus transfers included) had you at Gatwick at some unearthly hour but still, as above, not arriving at your accommodation in time to ski that day. The other ways to avoid losing a day were to take the overnight ‘Snowtrain’ – usually quite expensive – or with four people in a car drive overnight from the UK in shifts, ~three hours driving each. The latter I never actually tried.
The risk of car rental is that unless you rent a 4×4, or stick to the car park in the town, you could get stuck. And the car park capacity is another risk; when I was in Cervinia with Justine in Dec, we had a visitor friend and he barely found a parking space. In Jan, however, there were lots of spaces. So, as well as checking airport webcams, you need to check car park webcams
At €100x2, a taxi is “basically nothing”, especially if you travelled there alone, and have to haul everything yourself.
The advantage of a car is that you can do day trips to nearby resorts, to check them out.
Graham wrote:
Most of my planning of ski trips focused on how to avoid wasting a whole day on travelling.
I have been on the same quest, took a great effort to get the LFLJ approval but finally the first ski trip in 3 years and I was home in Berlin for dinner with the kids:
Peter wrote:
The risk of car rental is that unless you rent a 4×4, or stick to the car park in the town, you could get stuck. And the car park capacity is another risk; when I was in Cervinia with Justine in Dec, we had a visitor friend and he barely found a parking space. In Jan, however, there were lots of spaces. So, as well as checking airport webcams, you need to check car park webcams
I considered this and looked at how things worked on my first few trips, which were mostly packages involving a bus transfer. My conclusion was that French ski resorts were quite well-oiled machines in terms of keeping the roads clear, both in-resort and the roads up the mountain – don’t forget that buses and trucks have to go up and down daily – as soon as it snows they are out there with the ploughs. In any case, one takes snow chains from the rental company but in perhaps a dozen trips done like that I never had to put chains on or encountered road conditions that made it even close to necessary. Did the rental cars have winter tyres on, I don’t know.
I was renting apartments for these trips and most came either with a parking space or (the posher ones) a garage. On a few trips where we had a space rather than a garage we had to dig the car out at the end of the week, but that’s a bit of entertainment in its own right and rarely takes long.
Brits do make an awful fuss of driving in the snow!
Graham wrote:
Brits do make an awful fuss of driving in the snow!
no much opportunity for practicing. In my experience (25 years of driving to Italian ski resorts) the roads are practically always clear, except in case of sudden big snowfall – then you can find yourself stuck (with others) but help comes fast and clearing is done pretty efficient. However, in such cases one would not fly because it would ruin complete trip. For me fly to ski can be done in weather conditions like they were in previous week.
