02 January 2014
The best thing about Collett’s Mountain Holidays is the flexibility that is offered to our guests throughout their stay. As Resort Diarist, I spend a lot of my time taking photographs of the area to try and capture the landscape as well as weekly events and outings with our guests. This week, Ciasa Verena was joined by an avid photographer who was keen to get out and about to appreciate the area behind a lens, so I freed up some time to accompany him and offered my SLR for the morning.
Martin has spent many years in the Dolomites and so I left it up to him to decide on our route for the day. We headed out on Ski’s, cameras at the ready, up the Campolongo pass and onto the Pralongià Plateau where we were happy to find very few people at the top. Already the clouds had formed colourful shapes above the Marmolada and the Sella Massif, a nice warm up for the day.
Skiing our way down to the Marmotta Rifugio, the cloud came in and suddenly we are amongst the grey – time to get back to the top of the Plateau! As the button lift took us higher and higher, we finally emerged from the cloud and a dramatic sky to our right opened up. Unfortunately, this view was non-spectacular once away from the lift, so we decided to ski back down to attempt taking photo’s whilst being pulled along. This turned out to be a funny experience – whichever way the camera pointed, our ski’s decided to follow and soon enough we were unintentionally zig-zagging across the piste.
No ski day would be complete without a quick coffee stop and we ensured today was no exception. Although this time we opted for a hot chocolate with an added mountain of cream; a beverage Martin could only describe as “liquid gold”.
Warm and refreshed, we began to make our way back down to the pass, only to spot the now open lift up onto the Sella Massif. Spying only one other soul in sight, we grabbed the opportunity for quiet skiing and made our way up through the snow-capped pine forest. We couldn’t have asked for better; cream like snow, the wide open piste to ourselves and stunning views across the valley was on offer as we enjoyed our descent, stopping now and again to get the cameras out.
To end the morning we headed down the Boé red run back into Corvara. Due to the huge amount of snow on Boxing Day, many of the lifts had not re-opened by this point. This meant that we had what is usually an incredibly popular slope all to ourselves to play on. It seemed we had timed it perfectly – flocks upon flocks of people swarmed at the entrance of the Boé lift as it finally opened for the first time in days as we reached the bottom, just brilliant.
Buon anno! Happy New Year!
