Ski Resorts in Switzerland

The quintessential alpine country, Switzerland is smack in the middle of the Alps and dotted with some of the world’s most iconic mountains. You’ll also find the biggest glaciers, the most peaks in Europe over 4000 metres, and equally lofty opportunities to spend your money, though the thriving ski scene can be accessed on a budget if you know the ropes.

Switzerland's quaint image is more than just a sales pitch: typically there are ten ancient mountain refuges and bars for every modern self-service cafeteria and the villages are often very traditional, sometimes even car-free.

The long list of essential sights includes:

•    Huge mountains - fifty-seven 4000m peaks including the Matterhorn and Eiger
•    Europe's biggest glacier - the Aletsch, along with many more, some of which are skied year round
•    World-famous resorts - Grindelwald, Verbier, Davos, St. Moritz, Zermatt
•    Engineering, ancient & modern - Europe's highest train station (Jungfraujoch, 3454m), huge cable cars to famous peaks such as the Klein Matterhorn and the Schilthorn, and an integrated transport system that has you off the plane, into a train and rolling into the centre of your resort in style

For a while the country's strong currency made it a pricey proposition that kept international visitors at bay. The impression has persisted way beyond the fact: you can now eat and drink on-mountain in Switzerland for two-thirds of some French resort prices - it just looks like more in francs than in Euros. Meanwhile the quality is universally high so that whatever budget you're working to, you get value in Switzerland. This also extends to the skiing: abundant and exceptional natural opportunities have been relatively untouched by mega-development thanks to inate Swiss conservatism and environmental considerations. Though outstripped for years by France and Austria when it came to lift-building and snow-making, Swiss resorts have recently seen controlled development that preserves the charm but puts them bang up to date; they are well set to attract refugees from the 'factory skiing' of Europe's more crowded slopes. Everyone today - from families to expert skiers - is hunting for the piste or powder less travelled, backed up by quality accommodation and services. They'll surely find all this in Switzerland, as well as some of the most compelling resorts in the world: if you had to choose just one resort to ski in your life, you’d probably find it in Switzerland - anyone for Zermatt? - for the unique scenery, scale, ambience, and range of opportunity on and off piste. But that’s just the start of it.

Skiing in Switzerland
Switzerland's skiing is concentrated in several distinct regions. Easiest to reach are the Vaud and Valais resorts in the south-west - the Portes du Soleil, Villars, Verbier, Zermatt and Saas Fee - that line the long Rhone valley from Lake Geneva towards central Switzerland.

To the north of the Bernese Oberland, the vast mountain massif that divides the north of the country from the south, is the Jungfrau region's Grindelwald and plenty of other smaller resorts. To the east the big names – Davos and St. Moritz – are relatively distant places; the city of Chur is a reasonable hub for the many second-division resorts in the area.

Much of the skiing throughout Switzerland features big vertical from top to bottom, accessed by whopping cable cars, making for a very different ski experience to the ranks of modern multi-seater chairlifts that criss-cross the slopes of big ski areas elsewhere, with their rapid lapping of medium-length terrain. Even where substantial investment has taken place, such as Zermatt’s enormous (and ongoing) improvement in uplift and ski area connections, the raw material remains unchanged and unmatched: mountains like the Matterhorn, the Eiger and Jungfrau, and the glaciers and peaks around Saas Fee, still have their backdrop of little red trains winding through quaint villages. Most relevant to dedicated skiers is the average altitude of the country's ski slopes - they're high and relatively snow-sure, with plenty of glacier skiing; though Switzerland can’t claim immunity from snow-drought, it would be a particularly unenterprising skier who failed to find snow to slide on at any point during the long season.

Hidden secrets
As well as the best known ski resorts, there are plenty of smaller resorts in Switzerland catering primarily to local weekend skiers. If you can put up with the isolation (you might not see another skier on weekdays), and some truly historic lifts, places like Andermatt, Bruson and the Val d’Anniviers are for families and powder hounds alike.

Equally unknown overseas, but with a big Swiss following, are major resorts in the east such as Arosa, Flims and Lenzerheide. Unless you need a truly international resort, these places are all worth investigation, at least as a day trip from Davos or Klosters. Or from Grindelwald , try visiting nearby Adelboden which is the seventh biggest resort in the country, yet almost unheard of abroad thanks, until now, to limited flights into Berne airport (just an hour away).

In all there’s sufficient quality to choose from that even a significant ski resort like Crans Montana fails to make the first cut for this website, despite its size and conventional ranking. This is a positive reflection on the country's strength in depth, not a particular critiscism of Crans; with Zermatt and Verbier just a few kilometres away in either direction, sending someone to ski Crans Montana just doesn’t make sense, while the resort's critics can justifiably point to a very short season on sun-baked slopes and extremely unpromising village architecture.

The Swiss
Then there are your hosts, the Swiss. Their worldwide reputation as the ultimate hoteliers is matched only by their famously serious approach to life (they even have a very small book entitled: Tell me a Swiss joke) and an equally serious attitude to making money.

This is probably most apparent in the majority Swiss-German speaking region, with the French- and Italian-speaking areas to the south and west seeming – at least to foreigners – more like outposts of France and Italy. But wherever you end up, you can be sure of extreme fluency in English (as well as their first three languages) and universally high standards that include the warmest of welcomes. Looking after foreign guests has been a way of life here for well over a century and they do it well.

Visitors also get to benefit from all the best bits of a country that runs like clockwork: public transport is organised (how else would you do it?) on the basis that you can get from pretty much anywhere to anywhere in comfort and at times that are likely to be useful, with stress-free connections; transporting luggage on buses and trains is entirely feasible, and at the major airports the train platforms are within a short trolley-push of the baggage carousel. Supermarkets such as Migros have a commitment to charge the same prices at tiny outlets at 1600m as they do in the valley, making self-catering a worthwhile option. Meanwhile the straight-laced restrictions imposed on city-dwellers (never mind not washing your car on a Sunday, how about not flushing the toilet in your apartment after 10pm?) by-pass most resort visitors who can find vigorous apres-ski when they want it but are unlikely to be troubled by a thumping disco disturbing them in the small hours. Though the efficiency and regulations are the butt of jokes, for skiers who want to get to the snow and maximise their time there, it's all good news.