Cross-border skiing in Europe

Skiers experience an indefinable altered state when skiing from one country to another. When crossing borders at high altitudes, there’s no one checking passports (but bring yours along just in case) and few customs checkpoints. You just sense that you’ve changed worlds. In the first village, a new adventure begins. Grüetzi becomes buon giorno, lunch switches from schnitzel to pasta, and the personalities of the border towns are never the same.

Cross-border skiing from resort to resort is a uniquely European skiing experience. Though stories of cross-border ski adventures abound, interconnected areas along the borders are in fact rather few. After exploring the Alps for the past decade, I have discovered only six areas with lift-connected cross-border skiing. If you dream of skiing over borders, these are the places to do it.

Portes du Soleil
Sprawling across the border between France and Switzerland from Lake Geneva southward almost to Italy, Portes du Soleil claims to be the largest interconnected ski area in Europe. Trois Vallées makes a similar claim, and I haven’t tried to settle the dispute, but it is clear that the skiing at Portes du Soleil is extensive, and it is far more rugged and demanding than at Trois Vallées.

The main Portes du Soleil centers are Avoriaz in France and Champéry in Switzerland. There are also 11 smaller resorts, four on the Swiss side and seven in France, tucked into the mountain valleys in the area. Champéry is a tiny, centuries-old Swiss village that hasn’t yet realized it’s an international ski resort. Barn odors waft down the main street, tractors tow loads of hay, and occasionally a small goat can be seen riding in the back of a station wagon. In the unpretentious bars, townsfolk discuss the latest village hockey scores. But change is evident: In the past few years, area hotels have been renovated and upgraded, and a sports complex and a new cable car have been installed.

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On the French side, Avoriaz is as opposite as one could imagine. A skier arriving from Switzerland is dazzled by the glitz. Where Champéry is traditional, Avoriaz is a modern purpose-built resort. In Champéry, you look hard for a building with more than four stories; in Avoriaz, condos tower twice as high. Nightlife on the Swiss side consists of updated oom-pah bands in smoky bars, while the French resort rocks with neon-lighted discos and simmers in dimly lit bistros. Champéry still has its cows; Avoriaz has never seen one.

The common denominator is wide-open, expert skiing over marvelous terrain. Beginners can stick close to the resorts and intermediates won’t have a problem if they stay on the trails; meanwhile, experts will be challenged by both the extensive off-piste skiing and the exhausting expanse. For super-experts, the “Swiss Wall” along the Swiss-French border between Avoriaz and Champéry offers as steep a challenge as any marked trail in Europe.

Zermatt, Switzerland/Cervinia, Italy

This is the cross-border experience most American skiers have heard about. Three cable cars bring skiers from Zermatt to the top of the Kleine Matterhorn, where they can then drop down to the Italian resort of Cervinia. It’s wine, pasta and scaloppini, then the return trip to Zermatt. The once-interminable lines in Cervinia have become shorter since the installation of a six-seat gondola system to Plan Maison, where the return trail to Zermatt begins.

The resorts, though connected, are as different as fondue and pizza. Zermatt is the picture-perfect Alpine village crowded with chalets; Cervinia is a collection of unimaginative concrete hotels. Zermatt offers some of the most challenging skiing in Europe (it humbles most experts), while Cervinia makes beginners feel like pros. Zermatt works with Swiss perfection; Cervinia thrives on Italian smiles and good nature.

The cross-border trip will take a full day, including a stop for lunch. The last lifts to the top and back to Zermatt leave at about 3:15 p.m. Lift personnel will warn you if bad weather is in store. Heed their advice. The lifts up to the border crossing have been known to close in high winds and whiteout conditions, stranding skiers on the wrong side of the border. The only recourse is an expensive overnight stay in Cervinia or a four-hour bus trip over the St. Bernard pass.

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