Snowboard, marvel and just be: Sina’s tips for winter holidays in Crans-Montana

Tips for your winter holiday in Crans-Montana

I can’t wait to final­ly spend some more action-packed days in snowy Valais and try out some tips for your win­ter hol­i­day in Crans-Mon­tana. As a youth hos­tel fan, I of course went with this des­ti­na­tion for my win­ter get­away. Togeth­er with a bud­dy, a friend and a fluffy four-legged com­pan­ion, we hit the slopes in the win­ter sports Mec­ca. Besides ski­ing and snow­board­ing, our agen­da also includes win­ter hik­ing.

The moun­tain vil­lage is easy to reach by pub­lic trans­port. You can either take the bus from Sierre to the Moubra stop and wind your way up the moun­tain at a leisure­ly pace, or take the state-of-the-art cable car to Mon­tana Gare. Pro tip: Take one option there and anoth­er back to mix things up a bit. 😉

The sunny side of life

Did you know that Crans-Mon­tana Youth Hos­tel was once used as a sana­to­ri­um? And today you get to ben­e­fit: All rooms on the south side of the build­ing fea­ture spa­cious bal­conies. The “Bel­la Lui” Youth Hos­tel, which means “beau­ti­ful light” in the orig­i­nal Valais dialect, impress­es across the board. Catch some rays on three dif­fer­ent ter­races. The sun shows itself pret­ty fre­quent­ly in Valais, shin­ing over 2,000 hours a year. I was also fas­ci­nat­ed by the his­tor­i­cal archi­tec­ture and the fine details of the inte­ri­or. It’s easy to see that this build­ing was designed with great atten­tion to detail.

Mountain calling

Enough chill­ing! After break­fast, we’re eager to get going. Our mis­sion: To make our first turns on the fresh­ly groomed slopes and stop by the shaped park to tack­le some obsta­cles. After all, it’s time to explore the 140 kilo­me­tres of slopes. The ski lift is around a five-minute walk from the youth hos­tel. This takes us straight to Cry d’Er – the heart of the resort. There’s a snow park, restau­rants, a fun zone and many ways to explore the dif­fer­ent areas of the resort.

One spe­cial high­light awaits you when you head to the sum­mit of Plaine Morte and dare to hit the black slope. The moun­tain panora­ma is amaz­ing!

And one more tip: Book your ski pass as ear­ly as pos­si­ble to ben­e­fit from the best pos­si­ble prices.

Golden hour at the Tschugger statue

After chill­ing at the youth hos­tel a bit, we go for a walk with our four-legged friend. We’ve heard rumours that the stat­ue from the hit Swiss series “Tschug­ger” actu­al­ly exists – and so we’re out look­ing for it. We can’t believe our eyes once it’s actu­al­ly in front of us (and we feel like we’re right in the mid­dle of the sto­ry). The Christ-Roi stat­ue is about a 1.5‑hour walk away. You can either walk back, or take bus no. 353 from Lens, Poste to Crans-Mon­tana, Le Mèrig­nou. A great change of pace from the ski slopes dur­ing your win­ter hol­i­day in Crans-Mon­tana, we promise!

Ping-pong, Jenga and time spent together

We round off the excit­ing day at Crans-Mon­tana Youth Hos­tel with a table foot­ball com­pe­ti­tion, excit­ing ping-pong bat­tles and some rounds of Jen­ga. The games are avail­able free of charge. For din­ner, we enjoy a deli­cious three-course menu, with, as always, a var­ied sal­ad buf­fet or soup, a main course and a sweet temp­ta­tion at the end. It’s great that we can spend some qual­i­ty time togeth­er at the youth hos­tel before falling into bed.

Winter hiking with a view

We’re super ready to explore the ski resort a lit­tle more leisure­ly today: on foot. This way, our four-legged com­pan­ion can join us too. Dogs can sleep in the pri­vate rooms of almost all youth hos­tels for CHF 15 per night. We head off right after the sump­tu­ous break­fast buf­fet.

Rein­vig­o­rat­ed, we take the gon­do­la cable­way back to Cry d’Er and the ski resort. We choose the win­ter hik­ing trail from Cry d’Er to Mer­bé. It takes just under three hours and promis­es great views as well as places to stop for food and drink, lead­ing back to the vil­lage. We’re not dis­ap­point­ed and our four-legged friend obvi­ous­ly has fun run­ning around in the snow.

Bottom line

The youth hos­tel is ide­al­ly locat­ed for access­ing the moun­tain rail­ways with­in walk­ing dis­tance dur­ing your win­ter hol­i­days in Crans-Mon­tana, and for enjoy­ing the alpine land­scape with won­der­ful views from the ter­races and bal­conies. What’s more, the des­ti­na­tion real­ly offers a lot to sat­is­fy your appetite for win­ter. I’ll def­i­nite­ly be back!