Where to Ski And Snowboard -

What? No sun?

12th March 2011, by Chris Gill

Valley cloud around the Gruppo Sella, Saturday 12 March

I arrived in Italy on Thursday 10 March, having met editor Watts, who flew into Innsbruck to join me for a quick trip to the Alta Badia and other parts of the Sella Ronda region. We’re staying in Corvara, a first for both of us, and may have found a new favourite skiing hotel in La Perla, a fine example of the informal luxury that the Italians do so well. Happily, Sky 2 is among the hotel’s luxury facilities, so I was able to catch the last moments of Italy’s historic Six Nations victory over France. (I had hoped to watch the match in a bar packed with Italian supporters, but sadly no one here seems to give a fig about rugby.)

After a cloudless week, today dawned cloudy. The weather forecast made mention of an inversion, so it seemed reasonable to guess that we might get above the cloud on Marmolada, which goes up to over 3300m. And so it was. On the big gondola out of Arabba the sun started to filter through as we approached the 2500m Porta de Vescovo. Three descents and two lifts later we were at the bottom of the three-stage cable car to Marmolada, and part-way up the second stage we burst through in to sunshine, to an outbreak of cheers in the 70-person cabin.

The picture at the top of the story is taken from the panoramic viewing platform on top of the top cable car station – well worth the climb. It shows Sasso Lungo (above Selva) breaking through the cloud on the left, and Gruppo Sella on the right. It looks like the cloud is dissipating, but that wasn’t how it worked out. We got one run in the sun, then it was back into the chilly, gloomy cloud.

But it was quite a run – about 1400m vertical to our planned lunch stop at the simple but satisfactory Capanna Bill. The red run down changes identity twice on the way down, but is an excellent wide red throughout; the snow on the top section was fabulous, with plenty of carving space. The map shows a black variant on the middle section, but if it was in operation we didn’t spot it.

The slopes on the way back to Arabba were a reminder that this sector offers some challenging skiing. Here we did find the black variant; it’s not seriously steep, and the snow was good (it’s shady), but very satisfying.

The snow on the lower and gentler slopes of the Alta Badia is fine, I am happy to report – in yesterday’s sunshine the sunnier slopes got slushy from late morning onwards, but there are no more serious problems. Quite a change from the pre-snowmaking days when Watts and I first came here on holiday.

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