🇨🇭The Alps · Switzerland

Skiing in Switzerland

27 documented resorts — from the big linked ski areas to the villages that never make the brochures.

There is a moment in Zermatt you do not forget. You ride the Gornergrat rack railway up, the window opens and the Matterhorn fills the whole landscape. There is no way to look anywhere else. That perfect 4,478-metre pyramid that has killed hundreds of mountaineers and which, seen from a sunny restaurant at -5° with a glühwein in your hand, looks like a Lego toy.

Switzerland does not sell skiing. It sells order. The trains arrive to the minute. The pistes are groomed as though a Swiss person had ironed them personally. The villages — Zermatt, Wengen, Mürren, Saas-Fee — are car-free, so you can cross the street without a 4x4 on foreign plates running you down.

Want serious freeride? Verbier, in Les 4 Vallées, the most technical alpine playground in Europe, where the Freeride World Tour ends its season every March. Travelling with family and want no complications? Grindelwald and Wengen, in the Jungfrau region, with rack railways climbing straight from the station and long, wide runs. Real luxury, not catalogue luxury? St. Moritz, in the Engadine, where winter tourism was invented in 1864 because a hotelier bet a group of Englishmen a free season that they would like the snow better than the Mediterranean.

Then there are the secrets: Andermatt, rescued by an Egyptian investor and today one of the most underrated resorts in the country. Laax and its freestyle park, which snowboarders treat as Mecca. Crans-Montana, with picture-postcard sun five hours a day in February. Davos and Klosters, where the Windsors spend their week on the snow. Adelboden, Gstaad, Arosa-Lenzerheide, Les Diablerets. And Saas-Fee, with a glacier you can ski all year round.

Anti-recommendation: Do not come to Switzerland if your budget is tight. A Wiener Schnitzel on a terrace in Wengen will cost you what dinner for four costs in Madrid. Come if you value the how above the how much. If you are after the resort where everything works and what is promised is delivered.

A week in Switzerland re-educates you. Coming home to a train that arrives 8 minutes late hurts more than it should.

Resorts in Switzerland

Every profile, in alphabetical order

4 Vallées

Maximum altitude: 3330 m
Kilometres of piste: 410 km

Skiing in Switzerland

Every profile, in alphabetical order

4 Vallées

Adelboden

Airolo

Andermatt

Appenzell Alps

Arosa-Lenzerheide

Bettmeralp

Braunwald

Champéry

Crans-Montana

Davos

Elm

Engelberg

Gstaad Mountain Rides

Interlaken

Jungfrau Region

LAAX

Leukerbad

Melchsee-Frutt

Muerren

Nendaz

Oberalp

Riederalp

Saas-Fee

St. Moritz

Wengen

Zermatt

Tell me what you are after and I will design the trip.