SWISS IT UP
Your guide to exchanging Rockies repose for Alpen splendor
We were feeling underdressed. Everyone else at the ne plus ultra, midmountain eatery at Corviglia in St. Moritz, donned a full regalia ensemble of Bogner, Chanel or Moncler. My son, Nick, and I, utilitarian in our well-worn Helly Hansen apparel, nevertheless removed our gloves and took a starched, white-clothed table with a view of the lift that moves skiers to the top of Piz Nair, which glistened in the winter sun. We settled in to study the menu, the voices of Italian, German and French jet-setters like a moody symphony around us. We had skied hard that morning, exploring some of the 250 miles of long, steep, treeless, Swiss-style slopes that compose this glamorous ski resort, located just a few hours by train from Zurich. Famished, we ordered essentially the a house pizza blanketed speciality, with the decadent stringy mountain truffle flammekueche, cheese and bestrewn with mammoth slices of umami-rich fungi. Everyone else at the tony restaurant — is that Princess Eugenie behind me? — gobbles it down, too. My son, a budding gourmand, his ski boots still buckled, also wants the herb-crusted venison and some mashed potatoes, capped with caviar. Me, I’m thinking about some champagne. That’s the St. Moritz way. In St. Moritz, as in all of diminutive Switzerland, stopping for real sustenance on a ski day proves as crucial as seizing that extra run. Most people scheme and wheedle for hard-to-procure, mountainside restaurant reservations, planning their schussing around what they’ll eat and where. And they don’t limit themselves to a late lunch. There’s often
a pre-lunch at a hut joint somewhere amid the snowy expanses, perhaps some local pea soup, hot chocolate or schnapps to warm the blood. The day’s grand finale, après ski, takes chi-chi gourmandizing to the mountaintop, inside village bars, on trains and amid elegant hotel lobbies. But despite the culinary enticement of hearty (and haute-y) ski fare, from fondue to foie gras, the advantages of winter sports vacations in Switzerland go beyond food and drink. About the size of Maryland, home to Alpine peaks and lakes galore, Switzerland has more than 250 ski areas, big and small, tucked into its mountainous, varied terrain. Though Norway takes credit as the birthplace of skiing, Switzerland adopted the sport in the late 19th century, both as a practical means of traveling across the landscape and as a wintertime recreational offering to British tourists who’d started to spend entire seasons in places like St. Moritz for health reasons. Today, the tiny nation’s rich ski industry, with its unique resorts, characteristic historic villages and stunning natural scenery, provides an exciting alternative to winter playgrounds in the United States. Besides skiing, winter visitors can sled, skijor (a sport in which a horse pulls a person on skis), skate, ride in horse-drawn carriages, play snow polo, snowshoe and more. Easy to access by train in all types of weather, the resort areas, from swanky Gstaad to newly reborn Andermatt, charge less for ski tickets, have longer runs with more intense vertical drops and encompass broad swathes of tree-free topography, configured so that riders can experience multiple mountains and/or ski from village to village — all in the same day. Add in technologically forward lift equipment, miles of well-maintained cross-country trails, abundant opportunities for off-piste and glacier skiing, village-side lakes for skating and curling, and a boisterous proclivity for celebratory apres ski, and Switzerland stands out as a destination every ski (and snowboard) lover should experience. Don’t know how to ski? They’ve got that covered, too. This year, the Swiss Ski Schools offers a program at 43 locations, which guarantee enrolled students will learn to ski with ease down a blue slope (their easiest marker) in three days — or they’ll receive a repeat course free of charge.
Don’t know where to start? Here’s our Swiss bliss compendium.