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I’ve skied in the Alps over a half-dozen times, including in France, Switzerland, and Austria. And I absolutely love it. The authentic mountain villages, the amazing food, the on-mountain chalets, the train travel … all of it. I’ve never had a bad experience and I’ll never turn down an opportunity to ski in Europe.
But I’ve also never found the skiing itself to be that amazing. If I’m really honest, aside from the views—and don’t get me wrong, I’d travel there just for the views—the terrain I’ve skied is mostly loooooong cruisers with moderate pitches, almost always groomed. Fun, but eventually kind of boring.
Before you come at my DMs, let me explain. Yes, I know you have to hire a guide to get to a lot of the adventurous terrain in the Alps. At Val d’Isère, we explored the lift-accessed backcountry with a guide, and it was one of my most memorable days skiing in the Alps. Boot-packing way above treeline and skiing swaths of untouched powder definitely gave me a different perspective on the popular French resort. In Engelberg, we rode the Titlis Rotair and skied the Galtiburg freeride route with a guide. My legs were Jell-o afterwards and a shot of Schnapps nearly put me to bed on the spot.
On other trips, without a guide, I skied from France’s La Rosière into Italy’s San Bernardo for a handmade pasta lunch, carved trenches down wide-open glaciers in Austria’s Kitzsteinhorn, and posed in view of the Matterhorn at Zermatt. And I treasure each of those memories.
But does the rigor and challenge of the skiing itself hold a candle to Big Sky’s Headwaters, Jackson Hole’s S&S Couloir, or pretty much anything off Palisades Tahoe’s KT-22? What about the entire mountain at Silverton? In my humble opinion, it doesn’t. Unless you hire a guide—which, granted, is far less expensive than here in the U.S.—the lift-accessed skiing at most Alps resorts is pretty meh.
That said, almost everything else about skiing in the Alps is amazing—including all of the things that make skiing in the U.S. pretty so-so. The cuisine, like raclette, fondue, and fresh pasta; the coffee and pastries in the countless on-mountain huts; the dance-in-your-boot après scene; the lift ticket prices, which are often less than half the cost of a daily ticket stateside; the ease of using public transportation to get from the airports to the ski resort—the list goes on.
Ok, maybe a vacation full of scenic groomers might be just what I need next winter after all.
