Tour and Travel

Posts Tagged ‘Resort’

The Portillo Chile ski resort offers excellent skiing with a lot of opportunities to venture off the beaten path. There are plenty of guides available, so those skiers who want to truly test the limits of their abilities can engage their services and explore the mountains as much as they’re able. Less advanced skiers will find plenty to do and, at Portillo, lodging is as much fun as the skiing. This is among the resorts that you can ski up to when you get off the slopes. It is located approximately 100 miles from Santiago.

Portillo Chile gets snow that’s similar to what you’d find in the Rockies. It also gets an awful lot of it, with an average annual snowfall of over 27 feet in total. There are some very rare instances where snowfall may be light but, when it is, Portillo Chile has snow machines that can provide good slopes.

When you ski Portillo, lodging means more than a place to sleep. On those lighter snow days, there tends to be a lot of activity around the lounges and other diversions at the resort, and there’s seldom a lack of things to do.

Portillo ski options are fairly evenly distributed across skill levels, but there are more intermediate and advanced slopes available than beginners slops. Expert slopes are readily available and include six very challenging runs. If you want to go off piste, there are several options. These are the areas where the resort recommends hiring guides; these adventures are not for the faint of heart or those whose skills aren’t razor sharp. Those who have the ability and want the adventure will likely have a thrilling ride.

Portillo lodging has a lot of selling points. This resort isn’t located within one of Chile’s tourist areas, so you get to experience the natural beauty of the landscape. There are numerous events organized by the hotel and they include offerings for people of all ages. The resort has plenty of amentias, including hot tubs, bars, fitness centers and more. You can even order a massage to relax those tired muscles after you get off the slopes.

Portillo Chile has a lot to offer, particularly to those who want both adventurous slopes and slopes that are appropriate for those who are just getting into the sport of skiing. The travel time from Santiago is approximately 2 hours.

Skiing is a favorite winter pastime of many people. But the enjoyment received when going on a trip can be greatly increased or diminished by your choice of ski resort. The proper ski lodge guarantees a fun time for all, while the wrong one may leave you out in the cold, both literally and figuratively.

Factors to consider when picking a ski resort include size, number of lifts and types of runs, rental availability and prices, and accommodations. A lot of these are personal preferences, so you’ll need to make your own considerations, rather than relying on someone else’s judgment, for the best experience.

The size of the ski lodge is vital to the atmosphere. Large resorts are busy and hectic, which is an environment that some people thrive on. Smaller resorts can be nearly empty, especially during the week, which is equally appealing to some. Choosing the size of your resort is easy, with resorts coming in all sorts of sizes.

The number of lifts at a resort is directly related to its size. Smaller resorts have fewer lifts, and fewer runs. But because they are less busy, there may actually be more access to the runs. The number of runs often influences how many options there are for any particular skill level, so it can be important if you want multiple challenges. Some very small resorts only have one or two runs for each skill level, so keep this in mind if you are the type to get bored on a single run.

Pretty much all resorts offer rental equipment. The prices are usually higher than those for equipment rented off-site, but they have the convenience factor going for them, and you may need to rent the equipment for fewer days overall. Rental equipment is not always the nicest equipment in the world, but for beginners, intermediates, and non-picky experienced skiers, it usually works fine.

The prestige and size of the lodge in question greatly influences prices. The bigger and more famous the resort, the more a lift ticket will cost, usually. This can be worth it, if you especially enjoy the particular lodge, or like the multiple runs available to you, but consider going to a smaller location if the prices at big ones are too high.

Accommodations are an important part of enjoying your skiing experience. Some of the bigger locations have hotels immediately on the slopes, where you can watch people skiing out your window. Others are a bit of a drive from the slopes, but have the advantage of being in more pristine wilderness areas, which some people appreciate.

Enjoying your ski trip is easy enough, if you take a little time beforehand to consider what you want from it. A little bit of research can go a long way in making sure that you find everything you want when you arrive, so set aside this time to make sure you have the best trip possible. There are locations for all sorts of preferences, so you should be able to find what you want.

If you’re planning a family skiing trip then Northstar-at-Tahoe ski resort was custom built for you.  The park is jammed with ski areas designed with kids and teens in mind.  There’s a fun park, two adventure parks and a 420 foot superpike too.

There are family-friendly distractions at the bottom of the mountain too.  The Villiage-at-Northstar is packed with stores vying for your vacation dollars.  There’s a movie theater and an ice-skating ring to help you kill time too.

Here are the resort’s stats;

Lifts—19
Base elevation—6,330 feet
Vertical drop—2,280 feet
Trails—92
Terrain parks—7
Longest trail—1.4 miles (Logger’s Loop)

Northstar has it problems too.  The ski resort lacks any truly challenging trails for advanced and expert skiers.  There there’s the crummy parking.  Forget your car and catch a shuttle at one of the downtown hotel-casinos in Reno or Lake Tahoe.  It’s free and the bus will pick you up again at the mountain and bring you back down around 5 p.m.

Crowds are the other thing to look out for.  On weekends and holidays this place looks like Disneyland complete with seemingly endless lines.  If you can swing it go on an off day to avoid the long waits and headaches that go along with them.

The Tahoe ski-season usually kicks off in mid November and with the aide of snow machines, resorts usually keep the lifts running until the middle of April.  During the off season you can take a gondola ride up the mountain and enjoy the view.  It’s pretty expensive but worth paying for at least once.  Northstar also opens up its trails for bikers to enjoy during the summer.

Heavenly Ski Resort is located in the South Lake Tahoe region.  The base of the mountain is easily accessed from hotels and casinos at Stateline and South Tahoe.  The gondolas are located right inside town, next to the luxurious Marriott.  Most hotels at Stateline will provide shuttle service to the base station.

Heavenly Ski Resort offers the highest elevation of all ski resorts in Lake Tahoe, 100400 feet exactly. It is also considered one of the largest ski resorts in the United States offering 4800 acres of skiing and riding between California and Nevada, 27 lifts and 82 runs. The mountain offers ski terrain for every level, from perfect cruising slopes to double-black diamond chutes. Beginner terrain 20%, intermediate terrain 50%, expert terrain 30%.

There aren’t many ski resorts that offer the majestic vistas like Heavenly. The name says it all. While skiing or boarding you can enjoy an incredible view down to Lake Tahoe or over into the Nevada desert.

Snowboarders will tell you all about Heavenly mountain, being one of the best mountains in the nation. It offers terrain parks and incredible half-pipes where advanced to expert snowboarders can practice their skills and living their dream of becoming the next Shaun White.  Service stations near-by will offer tuning service. It is a great place for boarders from beginner levels all the way to experts.

Heavenly also offers equipment rentals, ski school for adults and kids, mountain tours, nine restaurants and a Day Care Center for kids between the ages of six months and four years.  This makes it truly easy for mom and dad to spend some skiing time together.

Nestled among the tree-lined ski slopes of Val d’Isere’s chalet-laden Fornet area, L’Edelweiss is in one of the most beautiful spots in the Espace Killy. Val d’Isere can be known as a cold, desolate landscape with harsh winds, and not many pretty areas to sit, all of that lunar landscape imagery disappears on a good day at Edelweiss.

The run down to the restaurant offer twisting, turning pistes with plenty of opportunity for little cut through tree runs, a wonderfully interesting area of Val d’Isere to ski, in fact you can really work an appetite here. On the approach to Edelweiss it looks like the most perfect mountain lodge, somewhere you perhaps dreamt of on your first journey to the Alps…a real chalet.

If the weather is bad then the indoor bustles with the sound of chinking glasses and a crackling fire, but when the sun shines the terrace seats a large number of people with a view down the valley to die for. This really is the end of the valley and it is sheltered as such, in fact the weather never seems too bad to sit out up here, but it could be the food that’s so magical everything else is irrelevant.

The menu is certainly not expensive; in fact it’s really quite small, just a few starters and a few mains from the Savoie regions done very, very well. In fact I haven’t eaten Tartiflette like it anywhere else in the French Alps. The waiters are attentive to every detail, assuring that bread and water are never empty and your wine glass never even nears the bottom. You really won’t want to leave so make sure you book a table for the time you want it, as you don’t want to be pushed out too early. If you haven’t booked a table then don’t even bother at this restaurant, there’s never a chance of so much as a stool for one…it’s that popular! You’ll just have to ski on past, back down to Val d’Isere and grab a sandwich from your chalet.