I’ve just come back from three fabulous days of skiing on long, wide strips of man-made snow amid otherwise bare mountainside in the huge and stunningly beautiful Sella Ronda region. This incorporates resorts such as Selva, Corvara, Arabba and San Cassiano and at the weekend it is hosting World Cup races in Val Gardena and Alta Badia.
Despite no natural snow falling at all this season, the main pistes were open and in great condition from top to bottom. That was due to the area’s fabulous snowmaking system, which I rate as the best in the world. Snow machines were in action day and night everywhere you looked.
Diego Clara of the lift company Dolomiti Superski, which is responsible for the pistes too, told me: “Out of 1,200km of pistes in our region, 1,100km are covered by snowmaking and over 500km are open already.” The Dolomites was the first area in Europe to introduce snowmaking back in 1980 and has set the pace ever since. There are now 4,700 snow guns in the region, the biggest of which can produce 60 cubic metres of snow per hour. And the snow the guns produce lasts much longer than natural snow - because there is less air in it, it warms up less quickly.
Pistes are being created out of man-made snow Photo: Dave Watts
Because the slopes are grassy pasture land with very few rocks, they only need 30cm or so of cover to make the pistes lovely to ski, and I found them ideal for high-speed carving. At first it seemed bizarre whizzing around with bare, brown mountainside all round, but after a while I got used to it and enjoyed some of the best piste skiing ever, on mainly very quiet runs.
On the Tuesday our group completed the famous Sella Ronda circuit – around 23km of runs and 14km of lifts around the spectacularly beautiful and huge Sella massif – in under three hours because of the lack of crowds and lift queues. Then we finished with a couple of laps of the excellent black run down from Ciampinoi (the start point for Val Gardena men’s downhill World Cup race) to Selva.
For lunch each day we enjoyed delicious food in the region’s famously excellent mountain restaurants. We were lucky enough to be there on the Sunday when eight Michelin-starred chefs cooked in mountain huts – each had designed a special dish, which will be served all season for prices varying from 11 to 18 euros including a glass of specially selected wine. Fourteen huts in the Alta Badia area will be serving the dishes as part of its “Taste for Skiing” initiative.
Need to know
Dave’s trip was organised by Crystal Ski (crystalski.co.uk) and he stayed for two nights at each of two 4-star hotels: Sporthotel Panorama (from £1,083) in Corvara and Sporthotel Gran Baita (from £930) in Selva. Prices are for mid-March and include half-board, flights and transfers.
Strips of snow are being maintained in the Dolomites Photo: Dave Watts
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