Skiing the Alps

Jeremy's Guide to Skiing the Alps

I spent the 2005-2006 ski season travelling around the Alps, collecting photos and notes about a few of the major ski areas. If you're planning a ski holiday and hoping to find sick powder and deep turns, read on...

• Overview
  
  • Highlights
    
  • Annoyances
    
• Eastern Alps
  
  • Flims - Laax
    
  • St. Anton - Lech (Arlberg)
    
  • Davos - Klosters
    
  • Engelberg - Titlis
    
  • Flumserberg
    
• Western Alps
  
  • The Haute Route (Chamonix - Zermatt in 6 days)
    
  • Chamonix
    
  • Verbier (4 Vallées)
    

Highlights

Size

Alpine ski areas can be enormous, with more lifts, runs, and skiable acres than you could hit in a week. A single "ski area" might actually be comprised of a dozen interconnected mountains and towns, with 100 lifts, a few hundred miles of marked runs, and tens of thousands of skiable acres. It would be as if all Tahoe-area resorts were connected by cable cars and trams, so you could ski from Heavenly around Emerald Bay up to Homewood, cruising through Squaw on your way to Truckee for dinner.

Oh, and you want vertical? Try 7,250 feet at Zermatt.

Accessibility

Ever tried skiing at Lake Tahoe on a weekend? You might end up spending 10 hours driving in a storm from San Francisco to Truckee (180 miles), or an hour crawling along the Alpine Meadows access road (~3 miles).

Welcome to the world of efficient public transportation. From Zürich, you can reach St. Anton or Davos by train in just over two hours, no stress. The train station is a short 10 minute walk from the slopes. By comparison, US resorts like Jackson Hole, Durango Mountain, and Squaw Valley are many miles away from the nearest real towns: at their bases lie smarmy, expensive "villages" full of timeshare condominiums. Many classic Alpine ski towns were inhabited ~100 years before skiing became a global industry.

Powder

Finding fresh tracks at 4pm in a US resort can be a rare feat, except perhaps in huge unmarked areas like the Hobacks at Jackson Hole.

Most European skiers, however, prefer to ski groomed runs, which makes "powder days" more like "powder weeks". Hasn't snowed for 3 days? Not a problem: without too much effort, you can find a long untracked descent.

To be fair, it's far riskier to ski "off-piste" here than in the US, because only the marked runs are patrolled and controlled for avalanches. There's no concept of "in-bounds" or "out-of-bounds" in the Alps: anything that's not a marked run is effectively backcountry, with the consequent risks and lack of rescue services. Be prepared.

Annoyances

Chaotic Lift Lines

Nobody likes waiting to ride a lift. On the positive side, lift tickets are checked automatically in the Alps, with high-tech turnstiles that detect a pass anywhere on your body and automatically open as you push through. Very cool.

What's missing in the Alps is distinctly low-tech: a maze of ropes and poles to manage the crowds. This brilliant invention ensures that all of the lines slowly and calmly merge together. The Euros, however, prefer an uncontrolled mob of pushing and stomping on skis: apparently it's a sign of weakness to let another skier merge in front of you.

Crowds

Many US ski areas refuse to sell more than a certain number of lift tickets each day, as otherwise the slopes would be too crowded. Not so in the Alps: during peak holiday periods, you'll be literally rubbing elbows with a hundred fellow skiers and snowboarders as you pole through flat sections of groomers.