Just back from a fantastic week in the Dolomites! Alan, Neil, Jon, Ros, and Tim and Penny (plus ‘honorary Loiper’ Mark) were the only telemark skiers seen all week. The snow was in perfect condition and we had great weather for 5 out of 6 days. The Dolomites scenery was stunning! There were plenty of mountain restaurants and we always had a choice of places to stop for coffee and lunch.
We stayed in a nice hotel in the town of Ortisei (not far from Selva). Local skiing was accessed by fast gondolas ascending from either side of the town. In both cases, the lifts whisked us up from 1200m to over 2000m altitude, with easily a full day’s skiing to be had on the upper slopes. We did 3 days of skiing on these local runs and a lot of the time we had the slopes almost to ourselves. The conditions were perfect for telemark skiing.
On one day we took the bus to Selva (about 30 minutes on the ski bus) and we skied the whole of the Sella Ronda – a 40km ski circuit which can be done in either direction (clockwise or anti clockwise) with chairlifts and gondolas connecting up the runs the whole way round. We were more than 30% round after the first hour and a half, and joked about skiing it in both directions in one day. It can be done, but we would have needed to move much faster, and we would have finished with tired legs!
On another day we skied a different set of runs from the nearby town of Santa Cristina. Sadly that was the day that the weather was not so good. True to the forecast, it was a very grey day and we skied most of it in the cloud, with limited visibility. We skied multiple times on one slope, with a nice gradient, bounded by a barrier on one side and a chairlift on the other, so it was easier to make out where we were going. Later in the day, one long descent was very murky and difficult to manage (for me at least) with bad visibility and fogged up glasses! Four of us avoided the final run and descended on the lift.
My favourite day was an Inghams-organised trip to ski the 12km long Hidden Valley. An hour and a half from Ortisei, we were dropped of by the bus at the impressive Lagazuoi cable car, which took us up to 2778m. From there, it was an amazing ski run down to 1600m, with incredible views all the way down, plus an impressive frozen waterfall too. At the bottom of the valley, there was a 10-minute horse tow to pull us back out to the ski lift system at Armentarola (from where we were able to connect back to the Sella Ronda and finally catch the ski bus from Selva).
Next year the Dolomites area is hosting the Winter Olympics, so it wont be the best time to go back. Though hopefully we will return in 2027 or after.
Huge thanks to Ros for scoping out the trip and organising everything with Inghams! Thanks to the team for the nice photos.
