Skiing in the Dolomites

From Venice we headed north through the heart of the Dolomites. On a clear sunny day with plenty of snow it was a very spectacular drive. We arrived in Villabassa just on sunset and got the keys for our flat for the week. As we got out of the car it was -20C! We looked around the town that night and looked apprehensively at the gear they were selling for cold weather. There was even “socks” to put on over your ski boots to keep your feet warm!

Fortunately the next day was much warmer and Kath and I set off over the Brenner Pass into Austria. As we crossed the border the road was very snowy and it was slow going down the far side. And getting into the ski resort we made it up a steep hill by the skin of our teeth. We have chains but no one really uses them here – it just isn’t practical to drive 100km in chains so people use winter tyres or just make do like us. It certainly livens up the driving!

We met Brendan, Emma and some of their friends for a very enjoyable days skiing. We had clear blue skies, 15cm of fresh snow and some nice off piste areas to ski. We retired back to their hotel and enjoyed a hearty New Years Eve dinner with Shawn and the rest of the group. It was hard to drag ourselves away but at 9pm we got back in the car and headed back over the pass back to Italy. It was snowing on the Italian side of the pass this time making it a long drive home.

Next day we skied at Kronplatz and enjoyed the snow that fell all day. We then had a rest day and after that spent a very crowded day skiing at Arabba. We decided the quieter northern resorts were better and so spent our last day skiing at Sesten just down the road from where we were staying. It has some nice steep black runs giving our legs a good workout. All week Kath’s parents did sections of the 250km of cross country trails in the valley. On the Friday we started the drive back to Milan airport early having been scared by the slow drive to Venice last week. This time everything went well and we dropped them off in plenty of time and took the chance to load them up with about 10kgs of things from the mountain of stuff we are trying to get home to Australia.