8 Secret ski resorts
Want to ski the piste less travelled? Here’s a selection of ski resorts you might not know about
words by Arnie Wilson
1/ Ski Andalucia
There are precious few places where you can be lazing on the beach one day and cruising down the slopes the next. But not far from Spain’s Costa del Sol is Sierra Nevada, which is home to Europe’s southernmost ski haven and just two hours away from the summer resorts of Marbella and Málaga. On a clear day you can even make out the Atlas Mountains of Morocco.
Sierra Nevada is only half-an-hour’s drive up a scenic, winding road from the ancient Moorish city of Granada. On days when bad weather makes skiing particularly difficult, an outing to this historic city, with its famous Alhambra palace, provides a fascinating alternative.
The village of Pradollano, sometimes referred to by the resort’s old name of Sol y Nieve (sun and snow), clings to the mountainside 2,100 metres up, and has everything visitors might need, from banks, supermarkets, pharmacies and boutiques to ski and car rental firms, plus taxis to the numerous bars and nightclubs. The resort, which hosted the Alpine World Championships in 1996 and was once a haunt of King Juan Carlos I of Spain, has more than 60km of piste – most of it above the treeline – and six off-piste itineraries. There are two cable cars, 12 chairlifts and five surface lifts.
2/ Côte D’Azur for kids
Less than 90 minutes from Nice, after a spectacular drive through the Gorges de la Mescla and the ravines of the Tinée Valley, is Isola 2000. The resort is about 16km from the village of Isola, with its 12th-century bell tower and baroque parish church. By contrast, Isola 2000 was purpose-built. It opened in 1972 and has slopes of 2,610 metres. The skiing is divided into three linked areas: St-Sauveur, Pélevos and Levant, which form a horseshoe around the resort.
Isola 2000 was built specifically with families in mind, but there is plenty to challenge more demanding skiers and boarders, including a funpark and a halfpipe. Most of the skiing is above the treeline, and you should be able to see glimpses of the Mediterranean.
Despite its location, the resort receives a surprising amount of snow and the north-facing slopes ensure that it lingers into spring. In fact, it’s not unusual for Isola 2000 to enjoy better skiing conditions than its northerly neighbours, and the resort regularly remains open until May. More than half of the runs are suitable for novices, with about a third intended for intermediates. There are nearly 50 runs altogether totalling 120km and served by 23 lifts. The vertical drop is 770 metres.
3/ Old- fashioned France
If you thought all the good resorts in France were purpose-built – and therefore lacking in old-world charm – then look no further than La Clusaz. The valleys and plateaus of the Aravis Mountains, which separate Lake Annecy from Mont Blanc, are real Tour de France country, providing steep challenges for the celebrated cycling race. Many of the slopes are just as tough to navigate.
Just an hour outside Geneva, La Clusaz, Le Grand Bornand and St Jean de Sixt, the villages clustered around the Aravis range, offer a more traditional ambience than the standard space-age, brave-new-world-style French resorts. With slopes that have been grazed on by cattle since the Middle Ages, they have escaped the excessive urbanisation of the ‘70s, and managed to retain the feel of small mountain villages.
The villages market themselves as “one mountain range, two ski resorts, three villages”, and the Aravis ski pass is valid for the whole Aravis range – an area roughly two thirds the size of Paris – allowing access to 220km of pistes.
Although La Clusaz, nestling in pine forests at 1,100 metres, is an authentic chalet village, it’s equipped with almost 60 modern lifts, including an expensive new gondola.
Neighbouring Le Grand Bornand prides itself on being “the most important agricultural district in Haute Savoie”, a place where the paths used by the farmers and their families to take the herds up to the high mountain pastures have become a skier’s paradise. St Jean de Sixt is a good place for learners with gentle slopes that provide a forgiving environment for first-time spills.
4/ Modern Austria
Just as traditional resorts are rare in France, purpose-built resorts are equally rare in Austria. Obertauern in Salzburgerland is an attractive, modern resort built around a windy mountain pass that was first used in Roman times. The resort achieved a great deal of publicity when the Beatles filmed a number of sequences for their 1965 film Help! there. The altitude means that good snow cover is pretty much guaranteed, and the nightlife positively pulsates.
The resort’s well-linked circuit is almost entirely above the treeline on both sides of the Tauern Valley. You can ski back to most of the hotels on slopes that are suitable for sound intermediates. The higher you go, though, the more difficult the runs tend to be, and the more likely they are to be buffeted by strong winds.
5/ Swiss don’t miss
The Swiss resort of Villars, a 90-minute drive from Geneva in the Vaudoise, or Riviera Alps, has quite a different feel. It’s a sleepy, feel-good resort with some of its main slopes at Bretaye accessed by a quaint Edwardian mountain railway. Perched on a sunny shelf at 1,300 metres, it overlooks the towns of Aigle and Bex, as well as the Ollon Valley. The views across Lac Léman (Lake Geneva) and the Bernese Oberland Alps are spectacular.
From Bretaye, a network of lifts and runs fans out on both sides of the valley. There are chair lifts to both the Grand and Petit Chamossaire, with wide, open and sunny cruising runs back down again, while another lift takes skiers to Roc d’Orsay to meet the top of the gondola coming up from town. On the eastern flank, a variety of lifts take skiers to Chaux de Conches and Chaux Ronde, where another clutch of easy runs radiate out in a variety of directions.
The Les Chaux area is mainly accessed by gondola from the small village of Barboleusaz, just above Gryon (1,115 metres), a quiet satellite community less than 5km from Villars. There is also a quad-chair link with the chalet resort of Les Diablerets (1,200 metres) – named after the ‘Little Devils’ peaks that dominate the landscape at 3,209 metres.
Les Diablerets is a short bus ride away from a gigantic cable car which takes skiers and boarders to Glacier 3,000 via Col de Pillon, Cabane and Scex Rouge (2,971 metres). The skiing is extensive here: there’s 120km of predominantly intermediate terrain – chiefly wide, rolling, well-groomed alpine boulevards – served by 45 lifts.
6/ Easy Milanese
Not too many skiers will have heard of Pila, a resort which is close to the beautiful old Roman town of Aosta, the heart of Italy’s splendid Aosta Valley. After a scenic two-hour drive from Milan to the old town, it’s an 18-minute cable-car ride (or a 20km drive) to the ski area.
Pila has some 70km of varied slopes, with attractive treeline options on the lower mountain and some unexpectedly good off-piste action higher up. It’s worth getting as high as you can on the Platta de Grevon (2,752 metres) to make the most of the outstanding views of the Grand Paradis National Parc, as well as Mont Blanc, Monte Rosa and the Grand Combin. From here you can ski all the way down to Les Fleurs, a vertical descent of 1,400 metres. Pila has 13 lifts serving a variety of mostly intermediate runs.
7/ Stay lakeside
A picturesque lakeside town rather than a rustic ski village, Austria’s Zell am See, with its traffic-free centre, is inevitably some distance from the slopes. There are three principal ways up the local Schmittenhöhe Mountain, with its steep, gladed runs: the Zeller Bergbahn CityXpress from the town centre; the Schmittenhöhebahn cable car from Schnittental (a 2km bus ride); or another bus from Schuttdorf.
With its beautiful setting on the shores of the Zeller See, and its lively après-ski scene, Zell is a very popular haunt for skiers – despite all the travelling involved. Most of Zell’s 80km of runs are suitable for good intermediates, and a joint ski pass includes the small nearby ski area in Kaprun and the Kitzteinhorn glacier, enabling you to ski 130km of runs served by 57 lifts.
8/ Off-track Italy
While most skiers have certainly heard of – and possibly visited – Cortina d’Ampezzo, the most up-market of Italy’s ski areas, they may be unaware of the nearby Cinque Torri and Lagazuoi, although both are technically part of the Cortina ski region.
Cinque Torri, with its remarkable collection of exhilarating and well-groomed runs, has enough skiing options available to be considered a resort in its own right. Just a short bus ride away is the wonderfully evocative Armentarola run, which you can ski for the entire 8.5km roller-coaster ride from the craggy heights where the rugged Rifugio Lagazuoi is located.
The scenery is truly magnificent: huge Dolomite cliff faces tower above you as you glide down the not-too-difficult red run, which ends in Val Badia after winding its way down the northwest slope through Vallon Lagazuoi. On the lower sections of the 1,130-metre descent almost every skier will be unable to resist stopping to marvel at the frozen waterfall of strikingly blue ice. At the bottom, a team of horses tow you back to the end of the nearest slope.
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