Switzerland 

                              Spotlight On Flims/Laax/Falera

                                                          (Originally written in 2002 for OnTheSnow.com)
                                                                                    by Ted Heck

There is nothing “crappy” about Flims, Laax and Falera, three villages in the eastern Swiss canton of Graubünden, except mountains that hover over them: Crap Masegn, Crap Sogn Gion and Cassons. These are just three of six impressive peaks that comprise The Alpine Arena.

“Crap,” really pronounced crop, is the Romansch word for stone. Crap Sogn Gion is Stone Saint John, but most folks call it a mountain. Romansch is the incomprehensible fourth official language of Switzerland, a mixture of German and Latin tongues that sounds like someone speaking Pennsylvania Dutch with a Sicilian accent. You hear it in these villages that are still to be discovered by most Americans.

And that’s a shame. Better known resorts of Davos and Arosa are close by (making for interesting side trips), yet neither one has the dimensions of the Alpine Arena. The ski area measures 87 square miles, contains 136 miles of cleared runs and 29 lifts in a circus that connects the mountains. The longest run from the top of the Vorab glacier down to one of the villages is nearly nine miles and the vertical drop is nearly 6,300 feet. The glacier, open from October to May, is wide and popular with intermediate skiers, but there is a halfpipe for snowboarders. Two other pipes are on Crap Sogn Gion.

A word about lift tickets deserves to be repeated: The costs of riding uphill in nearly all European ski resorts are bargains for U.S. skiers. Average prices for passes in the Alps are generally a third to a half of their American counterparts.

The village of Flims is actually in two parts, Dorf and Waldhaus, with a total of 2,701 inhabitants, but five times that number of beds to accommodate guests, both summer and winter. It is a health resort where they come for the “cure.”

A bed and breakfast in a simple pension can be had for as little as $50. Half board in, double occupancy, in the luxurious Park Hotels Waldhaus complex runs more than $220 a person. The comfortable, three-star Hotel Larisch in Laax, looking up at Crap Sogn Gion, costs far less than that. Flims is the liveliest after dark, but folks with a car sometimes drop into the closest city, Chur, capital of the canton. It has a bustling area of shops, but the major allure is the narrow streets and old buildings that date back to the Middle Ages. You can sit in an old guildhall amid dark wood and lead glass windows and toy with a bubbling pot of cheese fondue.

If you are just discovering this ski resort, you also will learn that the Rhine River, commonly thought of Germany’s main waterway, actually begins as a trickle from rocks high in the Swiss Alps, not far from Flims/Laax-Falera. A stretch of the Rhine here is popular with whitewater rafters.

The Alpine Arena is less than 90 easy miles from the Zürich airport.