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Booking a singles skiing holiday – part 3

Continuing our article on ski or snowboard holidays for singles.
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Join a ski course or instructional package
This approach is only for keen skiers and is a great way to improve your skiing or boarding, or to learn a new snow sport, and join a ready-made group of like-minded souls at the same time. We don’t mean just a few lessons tacked on to a standard ski holiday, but a complete package that includes the ski or board training. The advantage to the single skier here is that, away from the snow, the group is likely to share accommodation, eat together, drink together and spend evenings huddled round feedback videos, or talking about avalanche risk or ski waxing – participants do tend to be more ‘serious’ about the sport on this sort of trip so this may not be for you if you’re into wild après-ski or afternoons soaking up the sun outside a mountain restaurant.

This sort of trip will not be restricted to singles, but is likely to include a high percentage of people booking alone and room shares are usually arranged if required.

Courses available cover a broad spectrum including on-piste improvers courses at all levels, mogul skiing, women only courses, off-piste training, freeride, telemark skiing, ski touring and ski mountaineering. Or try a different snow sport such as snowshoeing, cross-country skiing or even ice climbing. Our ski and snowsports section offers links to heaps of these sorts of courses.

Think outside the box
There is nothing to say that you can’t book your trip with an operator outside of your own country, the Telemark Ski Company positively encourages skiers (single or otherwise) from North America and beyond to join them on their ski trips in Europe. And UK single skiers should take a look at the single skier packages offered by US and Canadian companies, many of which are listed on our singles ski holidays pages.

Hitch up with other skiers or boarders
With the proliferation of networking sites and the like, plenty of opportunities now exist to advertise for ski buddies and travel companions to take a trip with. For example Snowheads has a section for solo skiers to find ski buddies or a group to join; PistePals has a forum where ski and boarding groups can form or existing groups can advertise for extra members. Gumtree as a section for travel partners and Meetup is a way for individuals with a similar interest to get together, sorted by town/city/country. Why not find or form a Meetup group in your area and book a package together, taking advantage of group discounts into the bargain?

Join a snowsports club, activity club or social club and ski with them
Another, rather more long-winded, approach is to join a club of some sort and ski on their annual ski trip. Many clubs, even non-sporty ones, run ski trips each year and many participants will be single people.

National ski and board clubs such as the Ski Club of GB and Snowboard Club UK are a good place to start. Then try ski clubs based around the dry slopes and snow domes, regional ski clubs and those based around a particular aspect of the sport such as cross-country skiing or ski touring. Outdoor, activity, walking, climbing and other sports clubs also frequently feature a club skiing trip; and then there are straightforward social clubs, University ski clubs, work and corporate clubs. Some of these will be listed on the web, but others don't have websites or will not list all activities so they may have to be hunted down by research at your local library, sports centres, hobby magazines, or professional and work bodies.

What have we missed?
Finally, we are interested in hearing about other options, experiences and ideas people have for singles skiing trips and are determined that our directory section is not just the same list of the obvious we see elsewhere on the web – please let us know if there is anything else we should be reporting on.

Text and photos © Travel-quest 2008