KEEP THE DREAM ALIVE

IN THESE CRAZY TIMES, ITALY PROVIDES FODDER WHEN THINKING ABOUT OUR NEXT GREAT SKI ADVENTURE. WE ASKED SIX WELL-TRAVELLED SKI CANADA CONTRIBUTORS FOR THEIR BEST MEMORIES OF PEAKS, POWDER AND PASTA.

In these crazy times, Italy provides fodder when thinking about our next great ski adventure. We asked six well-travelled Ski Canada contributors for their best memories of peaks, powder and pasta.

At the age of seven I was a ski-god. And to prove it, I still have my gold Scuola di Sci badge from one of our annual family holidays to Sauze d’Oulx/Sestriere and the Via Lattea.

Nearly half a century later, if you dropped me blindfolded onto those southern slopes of Piemonte’s biggest ski region, just the smell of the larch forests and that certain warmth in the sun would tell me exactly where I was. It’s where I fell in love with skiing. Back in Britain where I grew up, I thought of little else for the rest of the year.

With gratitude to my somewhat irresponsible parents, the freedom I was given to explore anywhere has remained with me through life. Corrado was my super-cool Italian instructor whom I’d follow down anything, even when I did little more than snowplow. Certain milestones stand out: graduating to bananayellow Ellesse racing ski pants; and falling for and schussing after (for a week) an uncatchable (in every sense, despite the yellow pants) older girl. But the pinnacle was to explore the Via Lattea, or Milky Way, the eight linked ski areas with 400 km of slopes and seemingly unlimited off-piste that stretches from Sestriere to Sauze d’Oulx to the now Club Med cable car at Pragelato, or to Montgenevre in France. Everything was an adventure, Italian-style: high-speed, punctuated by Italian gastronomy, and spiced with the threat of a missed end-of-day connecting lift which more than once resulted in a long and expensive taxi ride back from who knew where.

My wife, Penny, and I have now lived in Switzerland for 16 years but we returned to Sauze d’Oulx just before the 2006 Turin Winter Olympics, and reminisced about the Fiat family history that built some of the clanky old lifts. “Of course it will all have changed...” How wrong can you be? Sestriere and the Milky Way wears its Olympic infrastructure lightly; even the terrifying chairlift on which skis have to be carried rather than worn, with a nervejangling icy run-off at the top, was still in operation and just as scary. But the best bits also remain: the larch scent, warm sun, and even—on a weekday anyway— rolling, deserted pistes. Skiing as it should be.

SAUZE D’OULX/SESTRIERE/ VIA LATTEA