# Saas Fee



## Guest (Jun 30, 2010)

Here is an old article with a little information on Saas Fee in the summer..

Also here is an interview of Saas Fee local Freddie Kalbermatten
 and a video here.


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## thetraveler (Feb 24, 2010)

thetraveler said:


> I'm planning on going to Saas-Fee for the summer. I think the snowpark is opening on 3rd July. Anyone been there in the summer? What's it like?



It's 36 hours before the slopes open, Pokerstars froze my account pending some stupid investigation, and I am bored as hell. Here's what I found about the little village of Saas-Fee so far.

POPCORN
The town's "coolest" snowboard shop is in the centre of the village, it's quite big, has loads of gear but, it's mostly Burton. They also have some stuff by Forum, Salomon, Nidecker and YES. The discounts are laughable: 20% off on last year's kit and 40% on two year-old kit. Considering prices in Switzerland are pretty high to start with, unless you are daddy's little boy or girl, do your shopping somewhere else. The staff is friendly but sales focused. Don't be surprised if they try to sell you something you don't want. 

WILD ONE
Smaller snowboard shop on the far side of the village but with all the right stuff, in my opinion. Nitro, Arbor, Lib Tech and Neversummer (the latter two are not easy to get a hold of in Europe so that's a plus in my books). 50% discount on last year's models which, for a small shop, is a decent discount to make. The staff is friendly and relaxed (much prefer relaxed shop assistants to overeager salesmen). After 5 minutes of bantering with the guy, I walked out of the store with a brand new 2010/2011 154 Skate Banana to test. Result.


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## thetraveler (Feb 24, 2010)

The glacier opens up at 7am and closes at 1pm so, if you are not drinking heavily the night before, you can get a good 5 hours in per day (the last hour between noon and 1pm the snow is pretty shitty).

There is a pretty decent half-pipe and two lines of kickers (medium line and medium to big line). There are a few token rails and boxes.

If you dont want to ride the park all day dont even think about coming here in the summer - the glacier runs are not much to speak of.



Outside of snowboarding there is a few fun activities: 

beautiful and challenging hiking trails
70km of mountain biking trails 
full size football pitch 
open air tennis courts
skatepark
zip flying
swimming pools, spas, etc.

To sum it up: in the summer it is fun for 7-15 days. Ideal if you are coming to a snowboarding camp (there is a few organised during the summer) or with a bunch of friends.


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## thetraveler (Feb 24, 2010)

Hopefully someone someday will find some of this crap useful... 

Saas Fee glacier is open from the beginning of July. It is one of the very few glaciers in Europe that is open year round (the others that I know of are Zermatt in Switzerland and Hintertux in Austria). I don´t know much about Hintertux but one of the local ski coaches told me that in Zermatt a lot of the glacier runs are closed to the public because of various national ski teams training so, Saas Fee is better if you are a member of the general public. Also, a local snowboarder told me there are a lot of flats on the glacier in Zermatt, which is not the case here in Saas-Fee. 

Back to Saas-Fee: in July the crowd is made up of some locals, some seasonal workers, various junior national skiing teams and several summer skiing ad snowboarding camps, mainly for kids. In short the mountain is packed with children. However, the park is not too busy. Almost nobody is using the pipe or the big kickers so its smooth sailing. This kind of setup goes on until late August.

In September, I´m told, is when things get very interesting. Conditions vary from year to year but its not strange to see snowfall in September and being able to ride right into the village from the top of the glacier (from 3600m to 1800m). Also, this is when all the pros and all the manufacturers come into town to start testing and preparing for the winter season. This goes on until November when the winter season starts...


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