HEARTY CONSUMPTION IN CORTINA
PHOTO alefaedda.com
Indoor climbing, hot-tubbing, wine tasting, snow shoeing and skiing aplenty. Dickie Fincher sets himself the challenge of fitting as much as he can into 72 hours in Cortina
SUNDAY 14th DECEMBER
SOMEWHERE BETWEEN VENICE AND CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, ITALY
13:55PM
It’s the first trip of the season and we’re off to Cortina d’Ampezzo. Sharing the same name as my grandfather’s car, I sometimes wonder if Redditch’s Ford dealer used the association to up his sales. And then I think a little harder about any possible links between the two and any further thoughts flutter away like rust...
One of Europe’s more southerly resorts, the geographical location means some folk write off Cortina as missing out on snow, but the season opened two weekends before as per tradition and enjoyed a monster dump. It’s warmed up over the last two days but webcams reveal there’s a good covering in town and the pistes are most certainly open.
A choice of airports within two-three hours include Innsbruck and Venice Marco Polo; we opted for the latter. The run into Cortina takes 95 miles through the flatlands of Italy’s industrial north - power lines interspersed with tiny farms separating the towns and cites – until the hills heighten up, when vineyards fill the slopes. The last few tens of miles get increasingly tight as the Dolomites find their feet and steep, hint-of-pink raggedy rock walls intercept both our vision and the road builders’ best efforts to get us rapidly resort-based.
The definitive ‘we’ve arrived in Cortina’ moment is sighting the original ski jump – the brilliantly-named ‘Trampolino Olimpico’, which stands saluting in place to your left just below the town. It’s a wonderful 50s statement, signalling past glories and now fresh intent, though it would be a bold ski jumper who fired themselves off this magnificent piece of architecture. Sadly the venue is not being revitalised for the upcoming 2026 Winter Games because it turns out that ‘faster, higher, longer’ is particularly apt in all respects for ski jumpers. They’re now flying a lot further than in 1956 and the road we’re travelling upon looms large both metaphorically and physically.
Cortina is busy preparing for both the Winter Olympics in a few years and the World Cup this coming season PHOTO bandion.it
2:30PM
We hop out of the minibus transfer at Hotel Cristallino, a classic located in the town centre.
3:30PM
An afternoon ramble. I have my own kit so don’t need to rent and can take an hour to wander around. The Cristallino is a few metres south of Cortina’s definitive strolling street – the Corso Italia. It’s been traffic free for years so you’re less likely to get flattened by a Ferrari on snow tyres charging around the place, but visitors do turn up in some epic motors and squirt them noisily around the inner ring road (max speed 30km/h). Shops are shut at this time of day, waiting for skiers and locals to reappear in an hour or so.
The town centre is quiet pre-Christmas and post opening, though there is a lot happening in and around the resort to prepare for both the Winter Olympics in a few years and the World Cup this coming season. Cranes are visible building new lifts, hotels are getting a spruce up and the delightfully faded grand buildings I remember from a few years ago are looking polished and ready to receive.
5PM
My favourite little bar – the Sports Bar at the north end of Corso Italia’s pedestrianised area – has a new neighbour. I can sit at one of the outside seats watching the new Dior shop’s customers add to their collection of fancy pants, paying €3.50 for an Aperol Spritz (with nibbles) in a resort where it’s possible to pay 300 times that for a ski jacket in almost every store in town. Each to their own - there’s still plenty of more accessible kit for those who’ve forgotten their gloves. In keeping with the ice hockey theme of the bar, I honestly couldn’t give a puck.
7PM
Supper back at the Cristallino, where we are the very best attended table in the hotel because it’s a very quiet week and Italians tend to eat later than we Brits. Now I know how it feels to be the sort of person who owns a handbag-sized dog.
9PM
A quiet stroll up town for a little digestif to ease us all to sleep. It is possible to get a grappa that doesn’t taste like or have the same effect as Eazi-Start; it’s best to ask the bartender having fixed him with the look of being a potential repeat customer.
“I have decided that I shall ski like a god to make it clear that the camera should be on me, and slither a couple of turns before letting gravity overtake fear...”
MONDAY 15TH DECEMBER
CORTINA D'AMPEZZO, ITALY
8:30AM
A short hop over to the Socrepes lift. This is a five-minute bus ride away, unlike the others that could be walked to from any town accommodation. Buses that loop around the key areas leave from outside our hotel, which is handy. We’re skiing on the Tofana side, to the right as you look up the valley. Pomedes is as high as we’ll go today at 2300m because Tofana – 1000 metres higher still – isn’t open and a new lift is opening the weekend after we leave. We shall have to make do with what’s left.
11AM
We’ve bedded in to enjoy the smooth pistes and perfect visibility off the first couple of lifts, which comes rather easily despite being the first snow turns of the season. The lower pitches at the bottom of Pomedes are very welcoming; wide, well fed by lifts and with a few diversions to keep beginners, improvers and indeed us engaged. To get a full lap of the resort in the limited time available we have Nic from Snowdreamers as a guide, who’s also filling us in on details about the best places for each level of skier, plus where the vast amount of off-piste is accessed.
12PM
Off the top of Pomedes, and spotted on the way up the Col Gallina lift, there dwells one of the finest steep pistes known to mankind. Before that, let’s warm up on Caprioli, a rolling, flowing red that tracks the terrain, diving around vertical faces and then opening out over the town. It’s the skier’s right side off the top. Go for the centre black and that’s properly steep, cutting through a rock formation and as vertiginous and alarming as anywhere I’ve been.
As I kick off, a tanned chap in a silver jacket is posing around at the top being followed by a camera. I have decided that I shall ski like a god to make it clear that the camera should be on me, and slither a couple of turns before letting gravity overtake fear. There is then a flash to my left as posing silver guy overtakes me, then several people quite a long way ahead of me, and then disappears. I’m gathering my breath and orientation when he reappears on the lift from below.
12:05PM
That guy seems quick, I venture to Francesco, our host from the Tourist Office for this trip. “It’s his local resort”, he suggests. Anything else we should know? “Oh yes, Kristian is Italy’s best ever downhill racer.” It turns out Kristian Ghedina – 13 World Cup victories and 33 podiums – is filming his local resort’s black runs for a promo video. So they probably won’t be needing me. Next time, eh.
1:20PM
It’s all been nice and steep and quick off Pomedes, so by lunchtime at the Rifugio Pomedes hut, just below the summit with a view through 270 degrees, we are ready for what turns out to be typically delicious, great value Italian mountain eats, think polenta with an emergency tiramisu for afters. You can also stay there, up on the mountain, which is one of those things I never do and really, really should.
2:10PM
Back out on the slopes and skier’s right for the most scenic blue of the trip, a perfect postprandial wind-down. Vast views to start, then a gentle track. What’s clear is that the piste map gives a somewhat compressed view of the mountain; short links on paper turn out to be long sweepers of runs, and there is plenty to go at.
On the way back up I’m chatting to Francesco. If we were to head up to the Tofana area (3244m) there’s a bowl at the top that offers an additional chunk of piste, a sweeping set of connecting runs down to Pomades and some epic off-piste accessed from said bowl at the top.
Around 12 years ago I was rootling about on a road trip through the Dolomites and taken through an eye in the rock to ski an itinerary called Busa Tofana. You access it via a via ferrata that then pops you into the so-called Hidden Valley, which turns out to be well known enough to have a rifugio at the bottom with a €5 cab-ride back to Lagazoi base (where we’ll be heading in a couple of days’ time).
Dickie and the team ‘in a proper pea souper’
After a hot tubbing and Prosecco session, the snowshoes are back on
5PM
It’s time to head out for a snowshoe hike. I view snowshoeing as best reserved for 18th-century fur trappers and octogenarian Alp-dwellers who don’t want to fall into their outside toilets, so my enthusiasm hovers somewhere near the dusk temperature. It’s a 15-minute trundle along a firmish trail that could probably have been managed in flip-flops, but where’s the fun in that, eh?
6:30PM
We’re in a hot tub at the Rifugio Mietres eating delicious cheese and ham nibbly bits, sipping prosecco and agreeing how agreeable this all is. Again, I remind myself that making the tiniest bit of extra effort brings mighty fine rewards. The tub is followed by an equally fine supper, with a giant stove to dry off clobber, warm boots and prepare us for the waddle back on snowshoes. Frankly, who needs them?
9:30PM
Me, apparently. The snow is in parts deeper, slidier and less predictable than my initial judgement would have suggested. It’s all rather hard without the pesky items, whereas after the briefest of wrestles refitting them I flit along like Daniel Day Lewis in the opening credits of Last of the Mohicans, scampering through the woods at a grappa-fuelled trot.
TUESDAY 16TH DECEMBER
CORTINA D'AMPEZZO, ITALY
8:30AM
It’s a bit mizzly out there, which makes today’s trip to Faloria a stroke of serendipity. For there are trees here, so we’re not in the slightest inconvenienced by cloud...
Corso Italia’s pedestrianised area, for skiers who shop PHOTO bandion.it
10AM
…Until we get up to the top of the Cinque Torri lift at 2300m, and into a proper pea souper. On a clear day you get stellar views of the Cinque Torri (Five Towers) mountain range from here. Not today. There are some winding blacks, which we clocked yesterday looking across the valley, but discretion becomes us and we take the long red past Rifugio Tondi, where we'll later consume polenta. The rifugio at the base of the lift exerts a magnetic pull, and we pile inside for a rejuvenating Bormbardino. This magnificent invention is half Advocaat, half brandy gently warmed, and half cream.
12PM
It turns out Bombardino can make you see in the cloud, helped by breaks starting to appear. The blacks become passable, with wonderful rollers dropping you into great sweeping turns. The short, sharp hit of yesterday's upper runs are replaced by longer cycles off just a couple of lifts. I hit a depression in the snow when already crouching, and as GSCE physics lessons explain so well, liquid pre-lunches cannot be compressed further and will inevitably collapse in a big slidey heap. Time for actual lunch back at Tondi.
1:30PM
Down to the bottom and we cross over to Cristallo, where the runs are quite diddy... for the moment. On my last trip the Staunies chair was operating, scooting up to just under 3000m and accessing the wide couloir above the Son Forca hut. Nic shows us a whole raft of itineraries off the back of Cristallo on a map, ranging from the tricky to the truly sketchy. Currently it's a hike up, though a new lift is coming in a couple of years' time.
There really is a lot of fresh lift capacity arriving in Cortina leading up to the World Cup next season, and then the Olympics five years later. The new Tofane lift has opened, the Tofane to Cinque Torri cable car, spanning 4.5km, will open next season and then the new Staunies lift is due the season after. It's all very... forward looking.
And this from a resort that can absolutely hang its bobble hat on both pukka mountaineering heritage and alpine sporting glory. The tourist team are very keen – nay insistent – on pointing out that facilities are being re-used, re-vamped and built for far more than the single events. There's a new hospital going in, an investment from the government as part of the legacy but also key to developing the region itself. It is, as they say, all systems go around here. In the meantime, I really don't have time to bootpack my way up the couloir - the indoor climbing centre awaits.
5PM
Cortina 360 is the year-round way to climb locally wearing tights and a little vest, or if you're an unprepared non-local then cords and a flannel shirt will have to suffice. The regulars appear to be non-judgemental until I start lacing up the hobnails to achieve a look I like to call 'the full Mallory' - happily there are rental shoes and even more happily a series of self-belay systems. It's a great facility, right next to the Tofana cable car and the ice rink (yes, that's also getting polished or whatever one does to ice rinks to make them Olympic-ready). I squeeze in a celebratory beer for climbing to the top using only the blue, green, red and yellow holds, and we head down to rehydrate via a wine tasting.
8:30PM
Alexander is a wine merchant with a convenient wine bar and free globally recognised sommelier to make you that extra bit knowledgeable as well as tiddled. The recommendations are leftfield, interesting and turn the drinks into a talking point. And it's on the Corso Italia, so no snow shoes needed.
Supper is pizza for all at the Ariston restaurant next to the old station – there's plenty more on offer, just not if you've spent the evening diligently 'testing' wine. Just enough space for a grappa.
WEDNESDAY 17TH DECEMBER
CORTINA D'AMPEZZO, ITALY
9AM
Last day, so a trip towards the Lagazuoi ski area - it links into the Sella Ronda which we Brits generally access from Ortisei or Selva in Val Gardena. But it's shut, so we roll back down the valley to Col Gallina and rattle out the gentle reds and wide blues in the company of the local ski club. It also turns out to be close to the exit point for off-piste runs off Tofana. See, everything is interlinked.
4:30PM
Checkout from the Cristallino for the transfer back to Venice. So that makes a full two and a half days' skiing for a four day trip. Plus indoor climbing, hot-tubbing, wine tasting and, of course, snow shoeing. We haven't skied one of the key areas and a couple of the detached centres, plus there are several thousand euros of ski jackets that remain unpurchased, and I forgot to get a small dog. ‘Abbiocco’ is the Italian for ‘feeling pleasantly pleased with oneself after hearty consumption’ - which makes it one of the most efficient and also excellent words ever invented. How fitting to collect this bon mot in Cortina.
Cinque Torri (Five Towers) in all their glory
FACTFILE
Hotel Cristallino doubles from €60 per person in winter, including breakfast.
The transfer cost was €80 per person in a six-seater Transporter – this can be sorted by the hotel or via the tourist office. To find out more about the World Alpine Ski Championships visit cortina2021.com. For more info on Cortina visit dolomiti.org/en/cortina
SKI ITALY WITH THE SKI CLUB
Freshtracks is running three trips to Italy next winter. The Madonna Ski Week to Madonna di Campiglio from 30 January 2021 costs from £1,649, including seven nights' half-board, twin share, return scheduled flights, coach transfers and six days' social skiing with a rep. Suitable for Intermediate (Red) and Advanced Intermediate (Silver) on-piste skiers.
Keen to work on your technique? The Pila Technique Top Up trip is running from 16 January 2021. It costs from £1,325, including seven nights' half-board, single occupancy, coach transfers, three days' instruction and three days social skiing with a rep. Suitable for Intermediate (Red) and Advanced Intermediate (Silver) on-piste skiers.
If it’s off-piste skiing you’re after, Freshtracks is also running an Alagna Freeride trip from 30 January and 20 March 2021. It costs from £1,799, including seven nights' half-board, twin share, return scheduled flights, coach transfers and six days with mountain guides. Suitable for Advanced (Purple) and Expert (Gold) off-piste skiers (early week) and Intermediate (Silver) and Advanced (Purple) off-piste skiers (late week).