The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
A Scandi resort with Second World War secrets
As British skiers set their sights on Norway, Gausta – with its Nato bunker and ‘covert ops’ history – beckons. Lucy Aspden-Kean checks it out
There are very few secrets left in the world of ski holidays. Luckily, though, the Norwegian resort of Gausta – 115 miles west of Oslo in the region of Telemark – knows how to keep things quiet.
Originally designed to be a tourist attraction in the early 1950s, the Gaustatoppen mountain and its unique tramway acquired a different function during the Cold War when they were occupied by Nato agents, who intercepted radio transmissions and Soviet intelligence from a secret bunker below the summit (1,883m). After the military decommissioned the facility, local enthusiasts worked to reopen the site, including the unseen agents’ quarters and radio room.
Entering the mountain through a series of thick steel doors marked “top secret”, the funicular transports passengers (in its original compact carriages) 850m into the depths of the rock. Then, a steep 1,040m track ascends at a gradient of 39 degrees to the summit. From here, skiers can access a handful of descents – and it is this unique experience that is now putting Gausta on the ski holiday map.
According to data from promoter Norway Home of Skiing, the number of British visitors in the nation’s resorts has skyrocketed over the past decade – increasing 900 per cent since 2014. The goal is almost to triple this by 2030, as resorts in the Alps become increasingly overcrowded, less snowsure and more costly.
This winter, Ski Safari became the first British operator exclusively to offer holidays to Gausta in a move that sets the trend for the future. The resort welcomes the arrival of British holidaymakers with open arms and some extravagance – as I discovered during a recent visit with my husband.
After exiting the bunker’s escape tunnel into the bitter Norwegian wind, we followed the waymarked trail and navigated down from the summit before dropping into the shelter of the col as the sun began to set. The views from Gaustatoppen take in a staggering sixth of Norway and, as the sky turned from orange to dusky pink, we basked in the quiet delight of having this untracked place all to ourselves.
Beyond the secret of Gaustatoppen, the local slopes were just as deserted. The 45km ski area is admittedly modest, but the draw is the space you have to enjoy it against a backdrop of picture-perfect scenery. We didn’t queue once and lapped snowsure, well-manicured pistes without any interruption. The skiing was varied, with plenty of warm-up blues, wide-open reds and opportunities to dunk beyond the pistes through lush forests.
While mileage-hungry skiers might fret about being unfulfilled, less pressure to clock up huge distances left us with fuel in the tank to continue after dark, when the resort’s slopes remain open for night skiing – the Norwegian alternative to après-ski drinking and dancing on tables.
When the time eventually came to retire, we retreated to our base at the Gaustablikk Fjellresort – a haven of Scandinavian chic. From its windows, the panoramic views across the valley towards Gaustatoppen were breath-taking, the alpenglow illuminating the mountain’s face at dawn and dusk. When we managed to tear ourselves away for dinner, we were presented with the likes of elk carpaccio, beef fillet and fresh trout: a culinary masterclass proving that skiing diets don’t have to revolve around molten cheese and overpriced schnitzel.
In a further break from the familiarity of the Alps, we heard just two English voices during our stay. “We’ve done the Alps to death,” Kevin from Dorset told me. He and his wife, Teresa, were enjoying the change of pace and planned to spend the day cross-country skiing (there are more than 85km of trails) before taking it easy in one of the hotel’s private floating saunas.
We changed tack on our final afternoon, too, heading for Rjukan, a town 20 minutes’ drive below the resort that has its own, unusual story to tell. Once the world’s largest producer of fertilisers, it became a Unesco Industrial World Heritage Site in 2015 and has an unlikely relationship with the British armed forces.
In the basement of the Vemork hydroelectric power plant – once the largest of its kind in the world and now home to the Norwegian Industrial Workers Museum – lies the site of one of the most influential, covert military operations of the Second World War. On February 16 1943, Operation Gunnerside saw a team of Norwegian saboteurs under British command set out to destroy 18 containers in the site’s cellar, which was under Nazi occupation. The cells were being used to produce heavy water – a key component in the race to build the atomic bomb – and in a heroic feat, the mission was successful without a single shot fired or any casualties.
Fans of the 1965 film The Heroes of Telemark will recall the story, but now – with the cellar expertly restored to house an exhibition, and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer scooping endless cinematic awards – even nonhistory buffs will no doubt find themselves intrigued.
It is yet another secret that Gausta has managed to keep up its sleeve, and another reason to trade the Alps for Telemark – before everyone else does.