(Madonna di Campiglio, Italy)

Our final two days of skiing were a roller-coaster of skiing emotions.  The second-last day started with soft snow under a brilliant sun: while the powder wasn’t flying, there were  lots of stops for photographs and sunscreen.

And yet, something wasn’t quite right.  After skiing the Pancugolo piste, we felt unusually warm.   We looked up at the chairlift thermometer and it said…24.5’C!   I didn’t think it ever would be too hot to ski, but we were definitely approaching that point.  We actually moved over to the Pinzolo area shortly afterwards, where some north-facing slopes would keep the temperatures at a more manageable level.

But, for every brilliant day in the sun, there are consequences.  While we awoke to more sunshine on our final day of skiing, there was a sense of unease.  We found our way to the bottom of the Miramonti chairlift…only to be shooed away by the staff.  We tried the nearby Cinque Laghi chairlift…rejected again.   What was going on?

Mass confusion reigned in the lift line.  There was the occasional shouted message in Italian, but nothing in the way of official communications.  Eventually, a kind gentleman translated the sad news for us:  even though the weather was perfect in the valley, the surrounding mountains were all being pummeled by ferocious winds.  It was too dangerous to ride the lifts.  And nobody knew when (or if) the lifts would reopen.

It was hard to believe the ski area was closed.  We eventually decided to do something that skiers rarely have the chance to do:  enjoy a beverage at a downtown outdoor cafe.  It was difficult at first, but we finally started to get the hang of it.   Three hours (!) later, we noticed that the lifts were starting to move.  Nobody was on them, but there had to be a reason.  Just in case, we ran back to the bottom of the Cinque Laghi chairlift.   And finally, at 12:30 p.m., they started letting skiers board the lift.  Game on!

After all that, the conditions were…abysmal.  While there wasn’t a cloud in the sky all afternoon, yesterday’s soft snow had turned into hard ice.  And the high winds had blown any loose snow cover far away from the pistes.  There was absolutely nothing for our skis to grip.  Our excitement at being allowed on the lifts began to dissipate.  It wasn’t time to ski:  it was time to skate!

And yet, despite the horrid conditions, we stayed on the slopes as long as we could.  The lifts stopped at 4:30 p.m. but we all knew that this was the end of another week of skiing.  Even with the treacherous ice, it was still great to be up in the mountains.  We must have waited for 15 minutes at the mid-mountain Patascoss junction before finally starting our descent to Madonna di Campiglio.  Sometime after 5:00 p.m., we made our final turns and another week of skiing in the Dolomites was history.

While this is the last skiing post from Madonna di Campiglio, there’s still more Italian food coming up!

(Madonna di Campiglio, Italy)

For our fourth day of skiing in Madonna di Campiglio, we set our sights on the only directly connected resort we had not yet visited:  Folgarida.

The trek to Folgarida was not very challenging from a skiing perspective but it was still a pleasure because of the brilliant sunshine along the way.  There were a few lift lines at Malghet Aut and the pistes were rather busy there, possibly because one of the main pistes was closed for a slalom race.  Nonetheless, we enjoyed some easy cruising in the sun and were looking forward to a lunch to match the conditions on the slopes.

Some inspired map-reading led to the discovery of Rifugio Solander, at the top of the fun intermediate piste running down Val Mastellina.  The rifugio was on top of a sunny crest but hidden enough behind a generic-looking cafeteria that most people weren’t even aware of it.  It looked promising, and there was a table open at the edge of the balcony.  Would this lunch live up to the expectations that had been set so high in Cortina d’Ampezzo and Val Gardena?

Indeed it did!  The warm dishes were delicious and, just as importantly after the past couple of days, still warm by the time we got to our table.  There was also an assortment of appealing fresh plates of local meats and cheeses:  we had the luxury of too many desirable choices.    We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves here and vowed to return on our sixth and final day of skiing.

After lunch, we did some more high-speed laps in the Val Mastellina and decided to take on another piste with a warning sign.  It was called “Little Grizzly” and the reason for the black rating was immediately apparent:  about 50 meters from the top, it dropped off quickly with a 67% incline!  Even so, there was enough snow on it to make it a much more enjoyable experience than our ill-fated journey down Spinale Direttissima a couple of days before.   We felt a sense of vindication, as we could actually link nice parallel turns here despite the steepness.

After that, we hung around the Marilleva region for a while and checked out some of the pistes that we had missed on our first day of skiing.  The crowds were much sparser than at Folgarida and we slowly made our way back to our base camp at Madonna di Campiglio.

As always, we ended with the challenging Amazzonia piste and finished our day with a  hearty appetite.  Coming up:  details on our final two days of skiing, as well as the special dinner of local specialties put on by our hotel.

(Madonna di Campiglio, Italy)

For our second and third days of skiing at Madonna di Campiglio, we visited the Monte Spinale/Passo Grostè and Pinzolo ski areas.

We had a bit of an adventure on Monte Spinale.  Most of the pistes were quite easy:  wide open and relatively flat.  One “black rated” piste was noticeably steeper but nothing we couldn’t handle.  However, there was eventually a fork in the road where a sign read “Expert Skiers Only”.  I believe it also mentioned that the piste was not groomed.  While two from our posse elected to bail out at that point, the remaining four of us decided to proceed.  How difficult could it be?   Ungroomed pistes are usually more fun to ski on.

We proceeded down the immaculate Spinale Direttissima piste for about 400 meters, wondering what all the fuss was about.  Then, after a sharp turn, we saw it:  the final portion of the piste had a stunning 70% gradient.  This is seriously steep.  While it may have been ungroomed (which in itself was not a problem), it was also heavily mogulled and consisted mostly of huge bumps of sheer ice.  All of the loose snow cover had been scraped away by petrified skiers snowplowing down the slope.  We abandoned all pretense of style and skidded our way down one of the scariest pistes I’ve ever been on.  Above, I’ve included a photo looking up at the piste from the relatively flat bottom section:  keep in mind that slope steepness NEVER shows up very well to photographs…and neither does ice.  It was much worse in person.

That afternoon, we ventured higher up to the Passo Grostè area.  With increased altitude generally comes increased weather volatility…so we emerged from the gondola into a spontaneous blizzard.   The photo above shows the tail end of the blizzard, once some visibility had been restored. 

While the second day of skiing had its challenges, the third day in Pinzolo was spectacular with beautiful scenery (see photo at the top of this post) and excellent skiing.  We were really close to the Brenta range of the Dolomites and people were constantly stopping to take pictures or just admire the view.  Once again, however, the lower part of a black-rated piste (Tulot) had turned to ice and was barely navigable.   I vowed to return later, once the sun had softened things up on this otherwise long, steep and enticing piste.

Each day, we finished by skiing down to the base of the Pradalago lift. From there, it was only a short walk to our hotel.  We quickly developed a liking for the black-rated Amazzonia [sic] piste as the final run of the day, as it featured relatively steep slopes that were generally uncrowded and retained abundant snow cover.

The food at our hotel continued to be excellent, although the on-slope restaurants we visited for lunch generated a  lukewarm response (partly because the food was often not even lukewarm by the time we sat down to eat).  However, the weather still allowed us to eat outside every day – no complaints there!

Stay tuned for more skiing…and find out whether we eventually found a lunch that measured up to the scenery!

(Madonna di Campiglio, Italy)

After 5 days of spring in Orvieto and Padova, it was finally time to jump back into winter with a week’s skiing in Madonna di Campiglio!  Within Italy, Madonna di Campiglio is known as being a rather posh resort…perhaps second only to Cortina d’Ampezzo in terms of prestige.  Outside of Italy, however, it seems to be attracting mainly skiers from eastern Europe.

We took a train from Padova to Verona, where we caught a shuttle bus that would take us directly to Madonna di Campiglio in just over three hours.  Well, it should have been just over three hours.  In reality, a massive snowstorm struck as we neared the village and the road to the resort was closed at Pinzolo.  We patiently waited on a bathroom-less bus for nearly 3 hours until the road had been cleared (and I use that term lightly) and we were able to proceed.

Yes, a three-hour delay was an inconvenience.  We never really knew when the road would eventually reopen and, even once we got going, the steep and winding road was pretty scary in the snowy darkness.  However, this sort of thing needs to be viewed from the perspective of a skier:  we were getting 41cm of fresh snow on the eve of our first day of skiing!  This is awesome!

Our arrival in the resort was wondrous:  with all of that fresh snow still fluttering down and the narrow streets lined with wooden “alpine” architecture, Madonna di Campiglio looked like a old-fashioned Swiss mountain village on Christmas Eve.  Our hotel was strategically located just above the Piazza Brenta Alta and just a short walk from two ski lifts.  When you consider that our hotel last year in Sestriere was next to what smelled like a sewage plant, we felt incredibly lucky to be in Madonna di Campiglio.

We awoke to mostly sunny skies and a vast new ski area to discover.  We spent the first day mostly in the Marilleva area, adjusting back to life on two skis after nearly a year away from the slopes.  By lunch, the weather was warm enough for us to have lunch on an outdoor terrace overlooking the slopes at the Orti Rifugio.   With disco-schlager music (Anton aus Tirol never seems to go away) providing the pumping soundtrack, it seemed like just yesterday that we were last skiing in Italy.

Our first impressions:  the mountains here are beautiful and there is a huge amount of snow.  The pistes were not too challenging…but we suspect that some worthy challenges are just around the corner.  And the dinners at our hotel have been fabulous so far, with an antipasto-laden open salad bar in addition to the three-course meals.

Stay tuned for more skiing!