Italy 

                                Spotlight On Val Gardena

                                                            (Originally written for OnTheSnow.com)
                                                                                 by Ted Heck

One of the great adventures in skiing, available even to timid intermediates, is the Sella Ronda in the spectacular Dolomites of northern Italy. It is an all-day journey around and among vast rocky formations where a camera cannot truly capture the grandeur. The ski slopes don't look as good on postcards as they do in real life.

The Sella Ronda is a major reason skiers flock to Val Gardena in the South Tyrol province of Italy. This picturesque valley is north of Bolzano and east of the autostrade that comes down from the Brenner Pass, the major route from Austria. The South Tyrol belonged to Austria before World War I. Its heritage is recalled by the fact that signs are in both Italian and German and villages have two names. More than a million overnight visitors come to Val Gardena; many of them call it Groden. Locals also have a third tongue, Ladino.

The three best known villages in the valley are Ortisei (called St. Ulrich in German), Santa Christina (roughly the same in both languages), and Selva Gardena (also called Wolkenstein). Together they have about 10,000 inhabitants and an additional 16,000 guest beds. Ortisei is the largest community, but Selva seems to be the most popular. It is also my favorite, because of its location on the Sella Ronda circuit and its amenities, including the family-run hotel where I have stayed on two occasions. Hotel Linder is affordable, comfortable and convenient to lifts. The help demonstrates that benevenuto, willkommen and welcome are really interchangeable.

Some 80 lifts are in the immediate area of these villages, accessing more than 100 miles of prepared slopes, mostly blue and red, and not counting many of the runs on the Sella Ronda. At least 75 miles are covered by snowmaking, a welcome hedge against mild winters.

Clockwise orange On my most recent visit I led a group of friends around the Sella group of rocky formations. We went clockwise, following a map and my recollections, and strategically placed orange arrows. Uphill on various lifts, some of them state-of-the art. Downhill on slopes easy to maneuver, with good snow everywhere, except on one "icy black sucker" we took by mistake. Our huge circus of lifts and slopes took five hours to navigate, including a coffee break and lunch in a delightful mountain restaurant. We passed through other resorts, such as Corvara and Arabba. Had we elected to browse in these villages and use their lifts, which were not on the Sella Ronda route, we would have added more miles to our itinerary.

The next day brilliant sunshine invited us to do it again, this time following green arrows pointing counterclockwise. We saw pinnacles and promontories from different vantage points along a route we agreed was easier, except for a series of poma lifts near the end of the circuit. Statistically, in two days on the Sella Ronda, we averaged 16 lifts for eight uphill miles and we were on the snow for twice as many. One run alone was three miles long.

Friend Paul Hand summed it up this way: "You never get to the top of the mountain, because the rocks are too steep, too jagged. So they are always there to gape at. Whoever designed the tour is a genius. You get a lot more to ski than in the Rockies. And you are not just going up and down the same slope or riding the same lift."

Each of us had a Dolomite Superski Pass dangling from his neck on stretch cords that allowed us to feed the ticket into electronic turnstiles. Lift passes in the Alps are much cheaper than in comparable venues in the USA. Adults ski here for about $50 a day; Paul paid much less with his senior citizen discount. The pass was good for the entire Dolomites, with 756 miles of groomed trails, unlimited off-piste terrain---and 460 lifts. (See our profile on Cortina d'Ampezzo, another star in the region.)

Fine dinners in Hotel Linder, enhanced by vintage local wines, gave us time to relax and replay the days. To enjoy the afterglow. To kid Susan Clarke for her dexterity with credit cards. Among her purchases were wooden figures from the atelier next door, where our host's brother and nephew create works of art from blocks of wood. Woodcarving is a major industry in Val Gardena.

I am sure that, when Susan dusts them on the mantle, they whisper, "Sella Ronda."