Where to Ski And Snowboard -

Light snowfall transforms Dolomite pistes

13th March 2011, by Chris Gill

In Corvara, editor Watts celebrates England's victory over Scotland

I wrote yesterday about the change in weather, from blue skies to cloud and fog. Today, we got the payoff. Nothing dramatic, but a few cm overnight on some slopes, and continuing light snowfall during the day. All in all, enough to make today the best of the past 10 days in Austria and Italy.

After 10 days skiing on mainly hard pistes under sunny skies, you forget that skiing can be more than satisfying - it can be blissful. And so it was today. We set out grumbling that it was one of those neither-one-thing-nor-the-other-days – flat light, but no serious compensating snowfall. Then we arrived at the col between Corvara and Selva, and set off down the Cir black to the outskirts of Selva. (At least, I think it’s called Cir – I can’t check because the rubbish Dolomiti Superski map they give out at the lift stations does not name the runs.) About 700m vertical of luscious turns later, we were beaming from ear to ear.

Next, it was the Sasslong downhill course from Ciampinoi to S Cristina – scene of K Bartelski’s famous near-victory in the World Cup in … well, we think it might have been 1982. Truth be told, it was too busy to be the stuff of ecstasy, but a damn fine run all the same. Watts took the second compression with particular panache, I thought.

We were aiming to do a circuit through Alpe di Siusi, so the next major descent was from Seceda to Ortisei. The top is nothing special and is followed by a routine shelf run, but the lower 75% of this scenic run – 1300m vertical in total – is fabulous.

Nothing else today deserves a special mention alongside these three descents. I will mention in passing that the aforementioned piste map is disgracefully unclear in the Alpe di Siusi area, which coupled with disgracefully slack signposting made our early afternoon harder work than it should have been. And that the restaurant Vallongia (not named on the piste map, of course) did a fine job of restoring the editorial sense of humour when at 2.45 we finally stopped for lunch.

We got back to Colfosco 8 minutes before the vital linking lift to Corvara closed at 4.45. The lift we needed to get above the village was closed, so we had a bit of hike back to La Perla, but even so we were in time to watch the second half of the England-Scotland match at Twickenham. Knife-edge stuff, but a great conclusion to a great day that reminded me how much fun it is to ski in falling snow.

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