{"id":8585,"date":"2026-02-16T07:36:28","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T07:36:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/8585\/"},"modified":"2026-02-16T07:36:28","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T07:36:28","slug":"hot-take-the-skiing-in-the-alps-is-pretty-boring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/8585\/","title":{"rendered":"Hot Take: The Skiing in the Alps is Pretty Boring"},"content":{"rendered":"

Unless you crave endless above-treeline groomers, lift-accessed terrain across much of the Alps won’t knock your ski socks off.<\/p>\n

\"Stubai<\/p>\n

Panorama view over the popular Ski area Stubai Glacier in Tyrol (Tirol). Biggest and snow-surest glacier ski area of Austria. With the mountain range in the background (Photo: Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Published July 1, 2025 09:29AM<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve skied in the Alps over a half-dozen times, including in France, Switzerland, and Austria. And I absolutely love it. The authentic mountain villages, the amazing food, the on-mountain chalets, the train travel \u2026 all of it. I\u2019ve never had a bad experience and I\u2019ll never turn down an opportunity to ski in Europe.<\/p>\n

But I\u2019ve also never found the skiing itself to be that amazing. If I\u2019m really honest, aside from the views\u2014and don\u2019t get me wrong, I\u2019d travel there just for the views\u2014the terrain I\u2019ve skied is mostly loooooong cruisers with moderate pitches, almost always groomed. Fun, but eventually kind of boring.<\/p>\n

\"ValThe author gets ready to make tracks to her group waiting below in the Val d\u2019Is\u00e8re backountry. (Photo: Samantha Berman)<\/p>\n

Before you come at my DMs, let me explain. Yes, I know you have to hire a guide to get to a lot of the adventurous terrain in the Alps. At Val d\u2019Is\u00e8re, we explored the lift-accessed backcountry with a guide, and it was one of my most memorable days skiing in the Alps. Boot-packing way above treeline and skiing swaths of untouched powder definitely gave me a different perspective on the popular French resort. In Engelberg, we rode the Titlis Rotair and skied the Galtiburg freeride route with a guide. My legs were Jell-o afterwards and a shot of Schnapps nearly put me to bed on the spot.<\/p>\n

On other trips, without a guide, I skied from France\u2019s La Rosi\u00e8re into Italy\u2019s San Bernardo for a handmade pasta lunch, carved trenches down wide-open glaciers in Austria\u2019s Kitzsteinhorn, and posed in view of the Matterhorn at Zermatt. And I treasure each of those memories.<\/p>\n

But does the rigor and challenge of the skiing itself hold a candle to Big Sky\u2019s Headwaters, Jackson Hole\u2019s S&S Couloir, or pretty much anything off Palisades Tahoe\u2019s KT-22? What about the entire mountain at Silverton? In my humble opinion, it doesn\u2019t. Unless you hire a guide\u2014which, granted, is far less expensive than here in the U.S.\u2014the lift-accessed skiing at most Alps resorts is pretty meh.<\/p>\n

\"chaletThe typical on-mountain lunch in the Alps puts U.S. resorts to shame. (Photo: Samantha Berman)<\/p>\n

That said, almost everything else about skiing in the Alps is amazing\u2014including all of the things that make skiing in the U.S. pretty so-so. The cuisine, like raclette, fondue, and fresh pasta; the coffee and pastries in the countless on-mountain huts; the dance-in-your-boot apr\u00e8s scene; the lift ticket prices, which are often less than half the cost of a daily ticket stateside; the ease of using public transportation to get from the airports to the ski resort\u2014the list goes on.<\/p>\n

Ok, maybe a vacation full of scenic groomers might be just what I need next winter after all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unless you crave endless above-treeline groomers, lift-accessed terrain across much of the Alps won’t knock your ski socks…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8586,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[50,1638,6735,5094,6736,6737,6738,1644],"class_list":{"0":"post-8585","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-alps","8":"tag-alps","9":"tag-parent_category-resort-skiing","10":"tag-tag-austrian-alps","11":"tag-tag-evergreen","12":"tag-tag-french-alps","13":"tag-tag-hottakes","14":"tag-tag-opinion","15":"tag-type-article"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8585"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8585\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}