OUTDOOR – Mountaineering School

Been canyoning today with Alan and rayno. Unreal experience! I had the 48th Kensington scout group with me and both of the instructors where very helpful and professional. This is our 4th time using his company and will definitely be returning. Thanks for an awesome day !

This store is at a pretty good location close to the train station and has very helpful staff that goes above and beyond.

Safety was deficient. No helmet or other necessary equipment for glaciar walk was provided (i know it because already did in iceland). For anaerobic exercise (>180bpm) at 3500m you must perform 10 days acclimatization according to WHO, here for a sea level person (even fit individuals: i run triathlons) can experience life-threatening heights sickness, which was not advised on safety information (unfortunately researched a posteriori). A guide should not tell literally when severe problems arise: “it’s nor my problem”, he was selfish. I asked for returning because I was accepted with wrong boots and my feet were wet and freezing just after 10min activity which could have led to finger loss and i was told that only can go out in helicopter or nothing. This activity difficulty is totally underrated, mountain experience is required, climbing without safety equipment on icy rocks at 150m heights is required which was not specified. I was accepted to perform the activity without the right equipment (whether or not was specified on equipment list). Safety measures were only in swiss german explained which I couldn’t understand, i only understand hoch german and not proficiently, it should have offered in english. Seriously life-threatening experience.

Avoid this place! The management here is more keen for your money than for taking interest in providing honest service. The management reassured us of ski conditions for beginners as part of a package that included half day lessons, rentals and passes.... Conditions did not allow for ski which we only learned of after going up to ski station. Even after discussions, management took no responsibility and didn't seem to care. Beware, management focus to take your money more than providing an honest and good service to its customers. I give 1 star because the gent Ian at rentals was very honest and he was helpful. That's less than I can say for management. It really felt we were robbed... Of money but Most importantly of our time.

Would not recommend at all. All the guy wanted was to sell stuff. He told us I would be able to practice in the baby slopes and then practice in the blues, which weren't open (he could have called the team up in the mountains to give us the right information. If we knew only baby and red slopes were open we would have preferred to book only 1h lesson, he insisted 2.5h would be better in order to have the experience of going to blues with instructor. He never told us the pass included the train and so we had to spend more on train tickets, we are tourists so we didn't know how the system works, would be longer than 2 minutes to explain it to us. We are very frustrated with the poor service offered to us and also the lack of care from the shop assistant.

Mixed bag of experiences overall trending towards questionable leadership and complicated logistics. We have done more than 3 weeks of ski schools, 5 sessions of free ride and skitour excursions and additionally 2 weeks of skischool experiences from our friends with GrindelwaldSports. All in all the quality of the instructors has been ok to very good. However, the set up of the school combined with the quality of the back office and the culture installed by management has repeatedly caused unpleasant experiences with the services we booked. The logistics of meeting locations combined with an uninformed back office seems to cause repeated hick ups. Examples over the last 18 month: We had booked a skiing class for a beginner (the skill level beginner was well communicated and confirmed by the office)- nevertheless the class was scheduled not at Bodmi but at First. (Optimizing instructor time on the cost of a student?) Oberjoch was too difficult and it took the instructor 2 hours to get the pupil down the slope . There was no learning experience - the only lesson learned was fear of skiing. No refund was offered. We had booked a Red Star skiing class (finalizing one legged turning to get into black prince). At the sign in day none of the skiing instructors was looking at the skiing skill of the pupil (they all had the back to the student while he was skiing down). The student endet up in a class that was still practicing parallel turns. It took a whole day of skiing to correct the wrong assignment as the other classes had already left when the mistake was discovered) 20% of the 5 day ski classes lost - no refund offered) At another occasion, we were told we could go into a black Prince lesson rather than stay a red king class which was a bit too slow for the student. When we arrived at the arranged Meeting point the class had already left. We had to take a half day class instead of the full day class. We still had to pay the full price for the 5 day full day classes even though we only were able to consume 2 day half classes as we were given wrong meetings point information. When we brought this up at the back office . It was contested that we had been given the wrong meeting point information and she tried to suggest that it had been our fault that we were not at the correct meeting point. In the end we could proof that we indeed had received the wrong information- they still refused to give us a refund for the half day lessons we were not able to use. We paid for skiing lessons we were not able to take. Another family experienced something very similar. They arrived at the arranged meeting point and the class had met at the train station instead, they had to find a special arrangement to get the student to meet the class. Stressful for both student and parent. I do not know if they received any compensation for lost Time. All in all, We got the feeling that the employees were not truthful with the back office and that the back office way not incentivized to improve the logistics and communication between skiing instructors and clients. The set up between the 4 different locations bodmi, first, männlichen and kleine Scheidegg is quite complicated. Confounded by a perceived lack of trust between management, back office and skiing instructors there are too many breaking points for a smooth operation. Feeling ripped off at numerous accounts described it best. Our friends had excellent!! Experience with the ski school in Wengen and the private lessons in kleine Scheidegg.

My husband, myself, and our two kids (ages 6 and 7) recently used Grindelwald Sports for rentals and ski school during our trip to Switzerland and had an amazing experience with them! We got checked in very quickly and were even able to buy our ski passes from their front desk! We were fitted with our ski equipment in no time and all ready to go before 9 AM. We met our kid's ski school instructor, Klara, for a private half-day lesson at the shop, and she could not have been kinder! We loved chatting with her about her own travels, and our kids immediately felt comfortable with her. We walked over to the bus station that took us to the Bodmi beginners area. My husband and I watched them for a bit then headed up the mountain for a date morning on the slopes (what a luxury while traveling internationally with kids and not something we get to do often). We chose to do the lesson on our arrival day since kids ski free in this region on Saturdays. However, since our kids were going on about 4 hours of sleep, this probably wasn't the best choice in retrospect! Klara, however, was so patient with them. We've realized with ski lessons that sometimes it clicks with kids after the fact. The instructors put in the hard work of building the foundation and may not see a ton of improvement, but once the foundation is built, they improve so quickly! I wish she could have seen our kids a day or two later skiing down the whole mountain SAFELY and with confidence! This company offers so many more activities that we wished we had more time to explore. However, from start to finish, everyone there was so sweet with our kids and helped make our first day in Switzerland so wonderful!

My involvement with this organization started on a positive foot. I first scheduled a guided tour of the Via Ferrata Murren and had to reschedule (in line with their cancellation policy) and it was not a problem. When I went on the rescheduled date, there were 5 people and one guide. I believe that I remember that the ratio should be 4:1 but that may be incorrect. Anyway, I got my gear and rented gloves (4 francs extra) and we started off. Within 3 minutes I decided I didn't feel comfortable with the number of people to guides (I was 20 feet behind the guide and if I'd need assistance there is no way he could have reached me) and felt very unsafe with the level of information we were given (a 2 minute safety talk). I decided instead of proceeding with a tour that I felt unsafe on, I would prefer to return to the starting point and let the group go on without me. I reached out to Grindelwald tour and requested a partial refund. My thought process was that a) the tour was able to proceed without me and there was no extra cost accrued by the fact that I started to do 3 minutes of the tour and b) if someone feels unsafe on a tour you are leading, it would be appropriate to address the issue. I was told that nothing would be returned to me. I asked if even the glove rental would be returned considering they were back in the glove bin 8 minutes after they were taken out and nothing was even washed so there is 0 chance they lost out on money there and they refused to even return that paltry sum. I did not expect a full refund but a partial one would have been an appropriate course of action.

We went at 09:00 from Grindelwald until Jungfraujoch, where we we’re roped together and we started an amazing journey of 4 hours until Konkordia Hut. Lots of crevasses to jump, but the guide was amazing! Next day we did 7 hours from Konkordia until Fieschertal !

I took ski lessons through GrindelwaldSports last season and again this season - a few weeks ago. My experience with them has been completely positive. I went from never having skied to doing nice parallel turns and getting better and faster with each lesson and I am not a youngster. Booking is easy and the location is in the heart of the village - very close to the arriving/departing trains as well as to the buses and trains that take you to the ski areas. They have a shop full of everything you may need for participating in winter sports. You can even have a coffee or a beer onsite at the start or end of the day. Rentals are available in the back of the shop and when you book a lesson, you get a discount on rentals. Both instructors - last year Jeff and this year Paul - were very patient, thoughtful and gave good instruction in a teaching style that I appreciated very much. GrindelwaldSports will always be my "ski home."

My son had his first ski lesson today. He was fitted for his gear at the shop. His coach Paul was patient teaching him on the slopes.