HIGH AND DOLOMITEY
It you want skiing with all the fun of the more famous resorts in France and Switzerland but costing less, slope off to Italy
ONE place I’ve often dreamed about going to ski is the Italian Dolomites.
It's the most striking mountain scenery on the planet and not nearly as famous as it should be.
I was reading one of those “100 places to visit before you kick the bucket” lists and it didn't even make it. A scandal.
If the Dolomites were in the US they would be a rightly world famous natural attraction with a Dolomite theme park at the bottom. Perhaps we should be grateful that they are not.
I finally got the chance to visit at the end of the ski season earlier this year, boarding the plane from Glasgow to Innsbruck with a sense of great excitement at what lay ahead.
The approach into the beautiful western Austrian city requires special training for the pilots as you fly though a valley which gives a spectacular view of the mountains seemingly a bit too close for comfort on either side of the plane.
You actually get a bird's eye view of skiers on the piste at one of the ski resorts on the way in.
A two-and-a-half hour journey across the border into Italy and we get the first glimpse of the spectacular Dolomite spires on the horizon as we drive into the Val di Fassa and the village of Canazei.
Incredible scenery was in every direction and the village was a lively place with apres ski bars with people sitting outside and enjoying the warm late season sunshine.
The mountains themselves were turning pink as the sun set. It was the perfect time to have a cold one, savour the golden hour and think about the ski trip we had lined up for the next day.
The village has narrow winding streets, ancient brightly-coloured buildings and a river running through the centre. The restaurants are plentiful and offer good valuefor-money meals. Your money definitely goes further skiing in Italy than in France or Switzerland.
After a good night's sleep in the very nice La Perla hotel in the centre of the village (complete with its own Italian-speaking mynah bird), it was time to rent skis from the local hire shop and do what we had come for – a ski circuit of the Sellaronda.
The Sella massif is a gigantic plateau of different mountains, the highest being Piz Boe at 10,330ft. We set off from Canazei to do the trip anti-clockwise. Queues for the first lift weren't terrible but it was obvious that doing the circuit was a popular thing to do.
Any good intermediate can complete the 40k circuit, the scenery was mindblowing as you hug the Sella and get to see great views from all the way round the massif and down the different valleys of the Val di Fassa, the Val Gardena, the Alta Badia and Arabba.
You do spend a lot of time on and off lifts to complete the circuit but it's one of those days on skis that, like the Vallee Blanche in
Chamonix, you don’t actually do for great skiing.
You do it for the tremendous mountain views.
Stopping in an atmospheric mountain restaurant for a bombardino cocktail is a must as you’ll need the extra energy to get you back into Canazei at the end of the day.
After tiring ourselves out skiing, we stopped in at the newly-built thermal spa complex 10km from Canazei, QC Terme.
I can’t say I’m one for parading around in a pair of trunks, a dressing gown and white slippers but I got into the spirit of what everybody else was doing.
Anyway, there’s a huge selection of water-based entertainment such as jacuzzis, waterfalls, saunas and steam baths – also water beds which were hilarious.
I apologise to any other guests if my attempts at getting on the thing ruined your mindfulness moment. It wasn’t a pretty spectacle.
As an alternative bit of apres ski, we went on a night-time piste basher trip on the Col Rodella in Campitello, which took us to the Rifugio Fienile Monte restaurant.
It was tremendous to experience the silence of the mountains and the diamond stars in the sky. The food was quite excellent too.
The next day we headed to Ciampac-Buffaure, which isn’t huge but has some lovely wide pistes and tree-lined runs which could be a winner in poor weather.
It was definitely the best skiing that I did in the area, as it had a large amount of vertical from top to bottom.
That meant longer ski runs without having to get back on a lift, and even late in the season the snow was good all the way to the bottom, thanks to the extensive snow cannon system they had.
The black piste Vulcano is a must do for experts and good intermediates, a perfect pitch and tree-lined with a fast lift to get back to the top. I could have done it all day if my legs held out.
The Marmolada, the only glacier in the Dolomites, twinkled invitingly in the distance.
Sadly, we didn’t have time to visit the high-altitude skiing it offered, which, although pretty disappointing, gives me a great excuse to go back one day,