Ski Resorts

Do you ever just close your eyes and imagine escaping your day-to-day surroundings? Wishing you could travel to some far-flung destination? All of us do this at some point and especially of you are a lover of the white stuff when winter comes around. Well, we have a destination for you. With its awe-inspiring mountains, expansive lakes, powdery snow and perfect vistas, the Austrian ski resort of Zell am See-Kaprun can certainly the answer to that dream.

Austria is famed for its beautiful mountains and amazing snow sports. Every year, visitors from across the world travel here to enjoy the country's incredible slopes and mountain lifestyle.  With pristine slopes, off-piste powder and the snowiest ski area in Austria, Obertauern is set to become your new favourite winter destination.

Thinking of going skiing this year, but not sure where your budget can take you? Let us help you with a few options. You have to be quick though before these well-kept skiing and snowboarding secrets are discovered by the masses.  Destination ranges from Europe, North America to the Far East. Some of these were once used as Winter Olympic destinations.

A 30-minute drive from the city of Lucerne is the freeriding heaven of Engelberg-Titlis, based around the mighty 3,238m-high Titlis mountain.  Sticking strictly to the pistes, Engelberg is a resort more accommodating to intermediate and advanced skiers than it is beginners, even though there are plenty of routes for all, and the little circle of blue runs at the top of the Jochpass chairlift is a veritable playground for skiers of all levels.  What really brings powder fiends – and international freeride teams – to Engelberg, though, are the vast opportunities beyond the boundaries.

The colossal peaks of Eiger, Mönch and Jungfrau dominated the Interlaken-Jungfrau region, which has been at the centre of skiing and mountaineering for more than 200 years.  The 4,158m-high Jungfrau was first climbed in 1811, which kick-started tourism in the Swiss Alps.  Almost 150 years on, Heinrich Harrer released The White Spider, his legendary book describing the first successful ascent, in 1938, of the North Face of the Eiger – nicknamed ‘Mordwand’ or ‘death wall’.  Sir Arnold Lunn organised the first ski slalom race in the village of Mürren in 1922, while the first men’s World Cup do

The stunning Valais region has more than 40 ski areas and 2,500km of slopes; of 45 mighty summits above 4,000m, including the famous, pyramid-shaped Matterhorn; of glorious panaromic views; of 50 grape varieties (best enjoyed chilled in a glass on one of the region’s many sun terraces) and one UNESCO World Heritage Site.  When the first thing you say about a Swiss ski region isn’t the fact that it’s probably the most snow-sure in a country pretty reliable for its snow, you know it’s got a whole lot more going for it.  Valais is one of the most spectacular ski regions in all of Europe.

The ski area of Arosa Lenzerheide comprises two resorts linked by the Urdenbahn – a cable car that was installed in 2014, creating a whole new world of winter opportunities.  Skiers can now get from the Hörnli in Arosa to the Urdenfüggli in Lenzerheide via a five-minute ride over the Urdental valley.

Looking towards the north face of the Bec de Rosses, a fabled mountain in the Swiss ski resort of Verbier, I ask a friend whether the extreme skiers and boarders zoom down the left - or right-hand side of the mountains. "Neither," she replies, "they go down the middle".

'Simply not possible' is the first term that springs to mind. How anyone could navigate a slope that's so steep and so strewn with jagged rocks and cliffs, that it looks more suited to rock climbing than skiing or boarding, is beyond me.

Pristine snow-capped peaks spread out on all sides as the ski lift takes us higher and higher up into the French Alps. The mountains are grand, stunning and peaceful all at once, but stunning and peaceful all at once, but their impressive size is making me feel like a tiny ant beneath the Eiffel Tower. After all, these are some of the highest in Europe with 80 per cent of the ski area above 1800m.

I'm sitting outside a restaurant in France, 700ft up a mountainside and the winter sun is out.  Not so strange really, considering that this particular region of the Catalan Pyrenees receives over 300 days of sunshine every year.  It is, however, a region that has remained under wraps for years, enjoyed in the most part only by French and Spanish locals.

Winter sports heaven 

Font-Romeu and its sister resort, Les Angles, provide some spectacular winter sports activities at prices well below those of their more illustrious neighbours.