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Austrian Culture: Skiing in Switzerland

Robert Easton

Switzerland is a relatively expensive place to ski. Equipment hire can be particularly costly, but in return you get some of the best downhill skiing in the world, and resorts where facilities are invariably first-rate.

Switzerland's ski resorts offer some of the biggest, highest and toughest runs in the world. Generally skiing has grown up steadily around mountain villages, meaning the setting and atmosphere is very different from the purpose built mega-resorts of France or the USA. The Alps cover about three fifths of Switzerland's area, so skiing is available in most regions.

The fact that a lot of Switzerland is quite high means that the ski season is longer than in other parts of the Alps, generally lasting from December until late in March in most areas. Of course, some places are so high that skiing is possible all year round.

A day's ski pass will usually cost something in the region of 60 Sfr, and equipment hire for the day will probably be about another 50 Sfr.

Cross-country skiing (Langlauf) in Switzerland is nearly as popular as downhill, and if you're on a budget it works out to a little over half the price of downhill.

Virtually every resort has snowboarding and a ski-school, and plenty of other activities like tobogganing and sometimes zorbing. Zorbing basically involves strapping someone inside a huge rubber ball and letting them career down the side of a mountain.

From among the multitude of Swiss ski resorts, here are a few of the best known:

The village of Zermatt in Valais was the base for the first pioneering assaults on the iconic Matterhorn in the 1860s. The first successful ascent of the Matterhorn was in 1865 and cost four lives. The Matterhorn towers over the ski resort, which has 245km of runs, a lot of which are reasonably challenging.

There are no cars in Zermatt, so you have to get around either by horse drawn sleighs or electric taxis. Its relative isolation means that Zermatt is rarely too busy, and the Klein Matterhorn (known alternatively as Matterhorn Glacier Paradise) is high enough to ski all year round.

The eastern canton of Graubünden is home to two superb skiing areas, Davos-Klosters, and St Moritz. Davos and Klosters are nine kilometres apart, but are covered by the same ski pass. You can save a little bit of money by only getting the pass for one part.

The pass for both areas is about 60 Sfr for adults. Between them they have 315km of runs. Davos has more nightlife, but Klosters is the more serene and charming, and is a popular destination for members of the British royal family.

St Moritz is the place to be seen. It is one of the most expensive, glitzy and fashionable places to ski in the world. There are various downhill runs, mostly of an intermediate level, and a day's pass for most of the area will cost you around 70 Sfr.

There are also extensive cross country runs. Every March, the prestigious Engadine Ski Marathon begins here. It attracts thousands of competitors each year, and they race over a distance of around 42km.

Apart from skiing and boarding, St Moritz is also host to all the activities you might expect in a place of its character - golf, fishing, paragliding, horse racing, all the health spas and treatments you could want, as well as polo and cricket on ice and various festivals throughout the year.

Sprawled over the Swiss/French Border in the canton of Valais, the resort 'Les Portes du Soleil' ('gateway to the sun' or 'the gates of the sun') set around the hamlet of Champéry, offers a humungous 650km of downhill ski runs serviced by over 200 ski lifts. There are also over 240km of trails for cross country skiing, and eight snowboard parks. The day's ski pass costs in around 55 Sfr.

Just an hour's drive from the capital Bern is Bernese Oberland's best skiing. The area is dominated by three massive peaks, the Eiger (ogre) Mönch (monk) and Jungfrau (virgin).

Jungfraujoch is Europe's highest railway station. In all there are over 200km of downhill runs, divided over the ski areas of Grindelwald, Männlichen, Mürren and Wengen. A two day ski pass for the whole region costs around 120 Sfr, or you can get a cheaper one day pass which only covers certain parts. Wengen and Mürren are both pretty car-free villages, but most of Mürren's skiing is quite challenging and not really suited to beginners.

Engelberg provides Central Switzerland's best skiing. Skiing is centred around Mt Titlis, only one hour's train journey from Lucerne. A day's pass costs 50-60 Sfr, but you can save quite a lot of money if you are prepared to limit yourself to a smaller area. There's a cable car to the top of Mt Titlis, and the more adventurous can even take a bungee jump that drops down from the cable car.

Other articles by Robert Easton
Albert Einstein
The Amber Room
Angela Merkel
Austrian Food
Austrian Hiking
The Berlin Wall
German Philosophers
German Cars
German Beer
German Food
German Golf
German Music
German Politics
German Stereotypes
Johannes Gutenberg
Michael Schumacher
Mozart
Sex in Germany
Swiss Politics
Swiss Skiing
Sex in Switzerland

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