(Madonna di Campiglio, Italy)

For our second and third days of skiing at Madonna di Campiglio, we visited the Monte Spinale/Passo Grostè and Pinzolo ski areas.

We had a bit of an adventure on Monte Spinale.  Most of the pistes were quite easy:  wide open and relatively flat.  One “black rated” piste was noticeably steeper but nothing we couldn’t handle.  However, there was eventually a fork in the road where a sign read “Expert Skiers Only”.  I believe it also mentioned that the piste was not groomed.  While two from our posse elected to bail out at that point, the remaining four of us decided to proceed.  How difficult could it be?   Ungroomed pistes are usually more fun to ski on.

We proceeded down the immaculate Spinale Direttissima piste for about 400 meters, wondering what all the fuss was about.  Then, after a sharp turn, we saw it:  the final portion of the piste had a stunning 70% gradient.  This is seriously steep.  While it may have been ungroomed (which in itself was not a problem), it was also heavily mogulled and consisted mostly of huge bumps of sheer ice.  All of the loose snow cover had been scraped away by petrified skiers snowplowing down the slope.  We abandoned all pretense of style and skidded our way down one of the scariest pistes I’ve ever been on.  Above, I’ve included a photo looking up at the piste from the relatively flat bottom section:  keep in mind that slope steepness NEVER shows up very well to photographs…and neither does ice.  It was much worse in person.

That afternoon, we ventured higher up to the Passo Grostè area.  With increased altitude generally comes increased weather volatility…so we emerged from the gondola into a spontaneous blizzard.   The photo above shows the tail end of the blizzard, once some visibility had been restored. 

While the second day of skiing had its challenges, the third day in Pinzolo was spectacular with beautiful scenery (see photo at the top of this post) and excellent skiing.  We were really close to the Brenta range of the Dolomites and people were constantly stopping to take pictures or just admire the view.  Once again, however, the lower part of a black-rated piste (Tulot) had turned to ice and was barely navigable.   I vowed to return later, once the sun had softened things up on this otherwise long, steep and enticing piste.

Each day, we finished by skiing down to the base of the Pradalago lift. From there, it was only a short walk to our hotel.  We quickly developed a liking for the black-rated Amazzonia [sic] piste as the final run of the day, as it featured relatively steep slopes that were generally uncrowded and retained abundant snow cover.

The food at our hotel continued to be excellent, although the on-slope restaurants we visited for lunch generated a  lukewarm response (partly because the food was often not even lukewarm by the time we sat down to eat).  However, the weather still allowed us to eat outside every day – no complaints there!

Stay tuned for more skiing…and find out whether we eventually found a lunch that measured up to the scenery!