The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
Masks on the ski slopes? It’s not as bad as I feared
On the slopes around Bergamo, hit hard by Covid, the rules on face coverings are taken seriously. Nick Trend is a convert
One of my great passions is skiing and it has been exactly two years since I was last on the piste. But now, at last, I have managed to make it back to the mountains again. As I write, I am in Italy, staying at a little resort called Pinzolo in the Dolomites. It is linked to the Madonna di Campiglio ski area a couple of hours north-east of Bergamo.
My biggest concern about the trip – apart from the risk of failing the fit-tofly lateral flow test which needed to be done less than 24 hours before arriving in Italy – was how to cope with the latest incredibly strict rules on face coverings over here. Last week, I wrote that I was happy to wear a mask indoors if it made other people less anxious, but here they have taken things to another level.
New rules were introduced last month which mean you have to wear a mask in public everywhere – even outdoors, even on the piste. Masks are also mandatory in many public venues and on all public transport, including cable cars and chair lifts.
What’s more, they have to be of the high-grade FFP2 type. These – and their equivalent, the N95 design – have a very fine filtration system and don’t lie flat on your face like a normal mask. Instead, they form a sort of cup shape over your nose and mouth. They cost about 80p each if you buy them in Italy, or about £1 each if you purchase them at Boots before you go.
Wearing a face mask while skiing does, at times, seem a faintly ridiculous requirement. I mean, it’s not often that you are less than two metres from another skier and it would be a pretty determined microbe that managed to pass an infection between two people passing each other briefly at speed.
And while I can see that there might be a Covid risk in a small, enclosed lift bubble, I would have thought that an open-air chairlift would pose far less of a threat. Yet compliance levels here are extremely high. Lift operators don’t have to do much in the way of enforcement, though they are stepping in if they observe people – normally tourists, as far as I can work out – breaking the rules.
Talking to one or two locals about how they feel about the issue, you realise why there is so much tacit acceptance of the rules. This is a country where people still have very traumatic memories of the high number of deaths occurring at the beginning of the pandemic. And that is especially the case in the north of Italy. Nearby Bergamo was one of the European epicentres of Covid in March 2020 and hospitals were overwhelmed as the then terrifying new virus hit the older population incredibly hard.
But, very quickly, I also began to realise that wearing a mask while skiing is not nearly so much of a problem as I had feared. Firstly, most of us are accustomed – in sub-zero temperatures at least – to rolling up our snoods to try and stop our faces freezing, especially on a windy day on a lift. A mask saves you the bother.
Secondly, once you try the FFP2 type, you realise that it is actually much more pleasant to wear than the flat version we usually use in the UK. This is because it allows some air space in front of your mouth and when you ski at speed you can even feel the fresh air circulating as it is being forced through the filter. So it is not nearly so oppressive, nor does it get so damp in cold weather – which is the perennial problem with a skier’s snood.
One slight inconsistency in the Italian ski rules becomes apparent at lunchtime, however. While you can’t ride a chair lift without wearing a medical-grade face covering, when you get to the top and walk into the nearest mountain restaurant there is a good chance it will be packed with maskless people eating, drinking and chatting loudly in true Italian fashion – with not a mask to be seen.