Norway - The secret paradise

Wonderful landscapes, magnificent slopes and nowhere hectic: winter sports in Norway is more than an insider tip - six months a year.

from Mac Huber

Are you one of those daredevil skiers who like ultra-steep slopes in rugged, rocky terrain? Or are you one of those who loves to rush into the après-ski scene early in the afternoon to celebrate Dj Ötzi songs with other like-minded people - encouraged by mulled wine and sweet schnapps? Then you need not read any further at this point. Because Norway does not offer such spectacles.

But if you're fed up with mass tourism phenomena, congested approach and return routes, crowds at daytime ticket offices and lifts, waiting times in noisy restaurants, then Norway can be a valid alternative. The Norwegian ski areas are not as large as those in St. Moritz or Zermatt, the slopes not as demanding as those on Titlis or Lagalp, and the infrastructure far less urban than that in Davos.

Good old drag lift skiing in Norway is different: more tranquil, quieter, more pristine. Just from the scenery alone. As a Swiss, you don't think you're in the mountains in the far north, but rather in hilly landscapes, whose peaks you might smile at with pity, because the highest point of all Norwegian ski areas is only 1450 meters above sea level. Spoiled alpine carvers may also sniff at the means of transport: the way up is not with comfortable chairlifts, but mostly still with the good old stirrup lift. And in view of the widely scattered individual huts in the clearings of the fir and spruce forests, one gets the impression anyway that time has stood still in the mountains of Norway, this highly developed country.

Tots ski for free Which is not true. In some respects, Norway is ahead of us in the ski resorts, for example, when it comes to the youngest skiers: Children up to the age of seven ski for free in Norway, and in many places there are professionally supervised ski kindergartens with imaginatively designed fun parks - also free of charge.

Child-friendliness is writ large in Norway, larger than the ski resorts themselves. With 39 lifts and 70 kilometers of slopes, Trysil, northeast of Oslo on the Swedish border, is the largest alpine resort (Adelboden-Lenk is about three times as big). Norway's best-known ski resort, however, is Kvitfjell. In that village, which consists of just a few huts and a hotel, Bernhard Russi once designed a downhill course that became an Olympic event at the 1994 Winter Games in Lillehammer and later earned a permanent place on the FIS World Cup calendar as a speed event in March. One of the reasons for this: When the spring sun melts the snow from the slopes in this country, Norway is still deep in winter. You can rely on Mother Holle in the land of the moose. Many ski resorts are open six months a year, from the beginning of November to the end of April.

Ski trails to paradise

The popular sport in Norway, however, is cross-country skiing. What the Sunday walk is in this country, for families in Norway it is the joint ski hike with a picnic and a visit to a tea hut. The infrastructure for this: simply phenomenal. More than 20,000 kilometers (!) of groomed trails are available for half a year. Wonderful trails through deep snow-covered forests in the lower regions or over mostly tree-free plateaus, the so-called Fjell-landscapes, offer incomparable and unforgettable cross-country skiing experiences. In Norway, you can glide along frozen lakes and rivers for 20, 30 or even more kilometers over the snow, far away from any civilization, without ever meeting a human being. More likely a moose will cross your path. Pure nature.

Even in the region around the Olympic city of Lillehammer, a two-hour drive north of Oslo, you quickly find yourself alone in the countryside. This is highly unusual for first-timers from densely populated Switzerland. And woe betide anyone who travels without a map, compass and headlamp when, as at the beginning of winter, it is already dark in the early afternoon and only the groomed cross-country ski trail indicates that there has been life here before, in the vastness of the winter landscape. In any case, it is advisable to visit Norway for skiing in March or April. Then the days are longer and the temperatures milder. And that's also when the big popular races take place, like the Birkebeinerrennet, where around 20,000 cross-country skiers provide a spectacular folk festival - 54 kilometers long.

You can find the article in the Winter 2012 issue.
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