Resorts

An updated edition of the Winter Games returns to its 1956 home.

Seventy years after Italy hosted its first Olympics, and 20 years after its last one (Torino 2006), the Winter Games return to Cortina d’Ampezzo in early February. It will be only the fourth time Italy has hosted the Olympics, and Cortina will be the first Italian city to host them twice. Whereas the 1956 Winter Games were contested entirely in Cortina, the 2026 events will span six sites and four venue clusters in three provinces: Lombardy, Trentino/Alto Adige and Veneto.

Map top of page: The 1956 Olympic venue map. Cortina hosted every event; in 2026, venues are spread across northern Italy, with Cortina the hub for women's Alpine events.

The regional approach is a response to the enormity of today’s Olympics. In 1956, the VII Olympic Winter Games included 821 athletes (687 men and 134 women) who competed in 24 events, from January 26 to February 5. The XXV Winter Olympics, running from February 6 to 22, will include 2,900 athletes (47 percent of them female) competing in 116 events. Another 600 athletes will compete in six sports at the Paralympic Winter Games, in some of the same venues, March 6 to 15.

No one mountain village can accommodate such a huge operation, which helps explain why the past three Winter Olympics have taken place in decidedly non-Alpine venues where the hosts constructed brand-new facilities (Sochi, Russia; PyeongChang, South Korea; and Beijing, China). Spreading the events across northern Italy allows the host country to use existing infrastructure. It also allows the use of some classic ski venues.

Along with curling and sliding events, women’s Alpine skiing will take place in Cortina, while men’s Alpine events will be held in Bormio. The split comes with logistical complications and eliminates the possibility for mixed-team events. Nonetheless, athletes and fans are happy to return to beloved and traditional Alpine venues.

A Tradition of Natural Attraction

Since the mid-1800s, Cortina has been a favored destination among mountaineers and Italy’s elite. The town sits in a sunny valley surrounded by spectacular mountains that were once a massive coral reef compressed beneath a tropical sea. Over millions of years, that sedimentary carbonate rock was heaved skyward, then weathered into distinctive pink-hued mountains, with sheer walls and craggy edges that tower over the rolling glacial valleys. In 2009 the area was name a UNESCO World Heritage site for its natural beauty and geological significance.

Along the way, this formerly exclusive enclave was discovered by the rest of the world, attracting vacationers and second-home purchasers. The village of 6,000 full-time residents swells to 50,000 during peak summer and winter months.

The town is steeped in skiing history. The first local ski race was held in 1901, and Sci Club Cortina launched in 1903. In 1909 the completion of the road from Bolzano to Cortina brought access to the “Queen of the Dolomites,” as Cortina styled itself. The first cable car opened in 1924. More lifts were added in the 1930s as ski tourism gained momentum. Competitions soon followed, including the 1941 Alpine World Ski Championships.

World War II and Beyond

In 1943, eight-year-old Carla Marchelli arrived in Cortina when her family sought refuge from Allied bombing of their hometown, Genoa. During World War II, Cortina was a
tranquil sanctuary, in contrast to its role in World War I, when the Falzarego Pass above the Ampezzo Valley was the stage for bitter mountain warfare between the Italian Alpini and the
Austro-Hungarian Kaiserjäger. The resort, which had been scheduled to host the canceled 1944 Olympics, was already equipped with hotels to accommodate well-heeled tourists. It became a hospital town for the Wehrmacht and was spared combat.

Marchelli recalls Cortina as a wartime oasis for her and her two siblings: “Everyone was smiling to help the broken soldiers. It gave us possibilities to survive in a dream.” The siblings also learned to ski fast. In 1956, the Marchelli sisters—Carla and Maria Grazia—returned to Cortina as part of the Italian Olympic ski team.

In preparation for the 1956 Winter Games, the regional and national governments invested in infrastructure upgrades to roads, lifts and venues. They built an ice stadium, the
Trampolino Olimpico ski jump and an expanded bobsled track, along with the dramatic Olympia Delle Tofana run for the men’s downhill.

In the Alpine skiing events, electric starting gates were used for the first time; they were triggered by an optical signal, and a buzzer alerted the athlete. The men may have skied the same line as the current women’s course, but they did it on a very different surface. The lower Rumerlo section, now a rolling meadow, was then a minefield of treacherous terrain that took down more than a third of the field, including all the Americans (Buddy Werner finished 11th even after crashing in the Rumerlo).

The men’s and women’s slaloms were held on the Col Druscie run, and the men’s giant slalom (GS) on the Vitelli run, on the valley’s Faloria side. Austrian Toni Sailer swept gold in all three Alpine events, a feat matched only by Jean-Claude Killy eight years later. It was the first Olympics broadcast live on TV to an audience outside the host country, via the Eurovision network. Few people, however, owned televisions, and most followed the Winter Games through radio reports.

After the Games, Cortina’s tourism boomed. More lifts followed, along with more of the jet set. Hollywood came calling, too, using Cortina as the set for The Pink Panther (1963) and For Your Eyes Only (1981), in which Olympic venues like the bobsled and ski jump were used for fantastical chase scenes.

Cortina continued to be a favorite stop on the ski-racing circuit. In 1969 the World Cup came to town; Cortina then hosted men and women in alternating years until 1984. In 1993 Cortina became an annual stop on the women’s World Cup.

Francisco Ghedina is as local as it gets in Cortina, with family roots that go back 500 years. His father was a young boy in 1956 and remembers his family of six sleeping in the living room because they were renting out rooms to Olympic visitors. Seventy years later, the Ghedinas now serve visitors in their popular pizzeria, 5 Torri.

After getting his finance degree from the University of Denver in 2008, Ghedina, a five-time All American skier, returned to Italy for his master’s degree in sports management. After a dozen years working on Cortina’s annual World Cup event, Ghedina was named sport manager for the 2026 women’s Olympic Alpine events. The year before, however, he had to step down from that role to take over running the pizzeria. He notes that he has seen huge tourism growth in Cortina, even since the 2021 Alpine World Ski Championships, with expectations high for the Olympics. “Every year we have more people,” he says. “But we’re a small town.”

The Next Olympics

In June 2019 Milano-Cortina was awarded the 2026 Winter Games. The dress rehearsal was the 2021 Alpine World Ski Championships, which went off smoothly despite pandemic restrictions. The promise of the Olympics helped secure widespread upgrades to the resort’s infrastructure, including lifts. The Freccia nel cielo (arrow in the sky) whisks riders from the center of town to the top of the 3,244-meter (10,643 feet) Tofana di Mezzo in 30 minutes via gondola and cable car; the new 10-passenger Cortina Skyline gondola connects the Tofana and Cinque Torri ski areas; and the new Lacedel–Socrepes gondola completes the link from town to the finish areas and the Cortina Skyline.

Prepping for the Winter Games has not been easy. While the Alpine facilities were race ready for the 2021 world championships, the rest of town still needed work. The ice stadium was renovated to host curling. The Eugenio Monti Sliding Center, named after Cortina’s local bobsled legend and abandoned in 2008, became a national lightning rod. Construction didn’t even begin until February 2024 and was barely—and miraculously—completed in record time. The Olympic investment brought new five-star hotels to town, while landmarks like the Ancora and Hotel de Len underwent massive renovations.

Local naysayers fear that people will stay away, scared off by the crowds and expense, while others look forward to leaving town and renting their homes for a fortune. Ghedina remains optimistic. “Cortina is going to be better in the future,” he says, hopeful that the Olympics will lead to another boom, as happened 70 years ago. “The money [the businesses] lose next year, they probably will make it back double,” he predicts.

An American Favorite

American women, especially the speed skiers who come for the annual World Cup events, have enjoyed much success on the Tofana. Jackie Wiles scored her first World Cup points in Cortina and has stood on the podium twice—once alongside Lindsey Vonn in 2018 and again in 2024. The Americans consider Cortina one of the best stops on the tour. “We’ve always been traditional downhillers and speed skiers, and Cortina is a very traditional downhill,” Wiles explains. “It’s open, flowy and fast, [with] a lot of terrain and different variables coming at you. I think we’re all really good at terrain, and we all know how to let the skis go. It’s really exciting that we have an Olympics here finally.”

Vonn has scored 12 victories and another eight podiums at Cortina since 2004. Mikaela Shiffrin won the super G in 2019 and at least one medal of each color in the 2021 world championships (bronze in super G and slalom, silver in GS and gold in the Alpine combined). It’s not a reach to think that American women could win multiple medals across all the Olympic Alpine events.

Skiing for Mortals

Cortina’s cluster of ski areas stands at the eastern edge of the Dolomiti Superski, a network created in 1974 that spreads over 12 Italian ski resorts for a total of 450 lifts and more than 1,200 kilometers (745 miles) of slopes. It is the largest ski network in the world.

Among the Cortina areas, Faloria offers north-facing terrain to the east of town, while Tofana lies to the west. Tofana’s upper section, Ra Valles, features some of the steepest terrain, along with spectacular views, while the lower Socrepes area has a variety of advanced slopes (including the iconic Tofana Olympica schuss between two cliffs) and open, intermediate cruisers. Skiers can also visit preserved World War I battleground sites on the 80-kilometer Great War Ski Tour.

During the Winter Games, the crowds may be epic, too, especially as most trails will be closed on Tofana from January to mid-March, but the new lifts will help move skiers along while also eliminating the need for any driving. Plus, the bonus of any European vacation is the more relaxed pace. Most of the rifugios—on-mountain bistros—will be open for business as usual, welcoming skiers for a coffee or beer, or a long Italian lunch.

Ghedina brings an Italian native’s perspective to the process of bringing the Cortina Winter Games to life: “I feel like the Olympics represent exactly our country. Sometimes we are a mess, and we are going to be late,” he admits, before adding, “I think we’re going to do a really good job.”

Frequent contributor and two-time Olympian Edie Thys Morgan explored the success of older World-Cup women racers in the September-October 2025 issue.

After several stormy seasons, Rob Katz returned as chief executive officer in May.

It’s been a long journey from the New York Catskills, where Rob Katz first donned skis as a tot, to his job as CEO of Vail Resorts, overseeing the 42 ski areas the company owns. And as of May 2025, Katz, who previously led the company from 2006 to 2021, is back for a second round at the top. He replaced Kirsten Lynch, who in 14 years with Vail Resorts served as chief marketing officer, then CEO for three and a half years.

(Photo top courtest Vail Resorts)

In middle and high school, Katz, who grew up in New Rochelle, New York, continued to embrace skiing at Hunter Mountain, where he skied in jeans (“for real,” he says). He also discovered Vermont areas like Stowe, Sugarbush and Killington thanks to an aunt and uncle (and cousin) who brought the young Katz along on their regular ski trips and eventually bought a house in Stratton. “I just loved that feeling of being able to go where I wanted on the mountain,” Katz recalls. “And I was compelled to want to get better so I could explore more of it.”

The year 1990 proved to be a watershed for Katz. He took his first ski trip to Vail with a friend whose father was one of the ski area’s original investors. (Katz says he slept on the floor during that trip.) And he started working at the investment firm Apollo Advisors in New York that August.

At that time, Apollo acquired the bank debt of Gillett Holdings, the parent company of Vail Associates. When Gillett came out of bankruptcy two years later, Apollo was its majority owner, with Katz overseeing the investment. Apollo took the company public in 1997 and renamed it Vail Resorts, with Keystone and Breckenridge ski areas already part of the portfolio. Katz joined Vail’s board.

In 2004, Apollo sold its shares in VR. Katz—who had in the meantime moved with his family to Boulder, Colorado—stayed on the board, serving as lead director. When VR CEO Adam Aron left in 2006, Katz assumed the role.

One of his inspirations in leading the company was George Gillett, whom Katz first spent time with during those early years at Apollo. “In terms of making Vail what it is today, from a business perspective, George had a huge, huge impact on that,” he says. “And the engagement with people, love of the sport, how you can wear that on your sleeve—I got that from George.”

One of his favorite stories about Gillett took place during a day skiing Vail’s legendary Back Bowls. “I was skiing behind him, and he was a really strong skier, very fast, and I was trying to keep up with him,” Katz recalls. “All of a sudden, he was zipping down, and he completely blew up—double ejection. I remember feeling like, ‘Oh, my god, what are we going to do?’” Gillett popped up, put himself back together and continued skiing just as fast as before. Katz’s takeaway: “This is a company filled with passionate people, and this is somebody who’s super passionate about the product, and about taking chances, and understands that even if not everything goes well, you just dust yourself off, put back on your skis and keep going.”

When Katz stepped down in late 2021, after serving as CEO for 16 years, he stayed on the VR board as executive chair and also joined the board of outdoor gear brand Yeti. And he continued working with the Katz Amsterdam Foundation, which he co-founded with his wife, advocating for issues like ensuring civic engagement in marginalized communities and promoting mental health in mountain towns.

Katz says it was VR’s people and culture, as well as feeling there was more he could accomplish, that ultimately convinced him to return as CEO this year. “I felt like there was a new transition that the company was going through, and that maybe the whole industry was going through, and there was an opportunity for me to help in that process,” he explains.

At the same time, he adds, “I also had to come to grips with the fact that when I started as CEO, I was 39 and now I’m almost 59. I don’t have the same energy, and I have to rely a little bit more on my wisdom and experience.” A generous compensation package no doubt helped. Katz earns $1 million annually, with the potential of a $1 million yearly bonus. He also receives $80,000 each year to spend at any Vail resort.

One of Katz’s early obligations was addressing a 3 percent decline in the number of Epic Passes sold (as of mid-September), as well as a 3 percent decline in North American skier visits in 2024–25. During an earnings call at the end of September, Katz called the results below expectations, and noted that “our approach to engaging with guests has not kept pace with shifting consumer behaviors and, as a result, we have not been able to fully capitalize on our competitive advantages.”

Among the measures VR hopes will attract additional guests? Getting more skiers to buy lift tickets. That may seem like a step backwards coming from the guy who introduced the Epic Pass to the ski world. But in the call Katz termed lift tickets “an essential driver of revenue and long-term growth,” adding that VR will enhance products and pricing that complement its pass program. Part of that strategy is the new Epic Friends tickets, which let passholders share a 50-percent daily discount with up to 10 friends this ski season. Each friend can then apply their one-day lift-ticket cost to an Epic Pass for the 2026–27 season.

Katz also inherited other challenges. Last winter, ski patrollers at Park City went on strike in late December 2024, after contract negotiations for better wages and benefits had stalled. During the pandemic, skiers complained on social media about limited terrain and services and long lift lines at many of VR’s ski areas, a perception that lingers. And in January a well-publicized letter from a VR investor brought the company to task on myriad issues, including leadership. Says Katz, “I’d rather be in a company that has a high feedback environment and people really care than in a company where nobody really cares about anything.”

His plans for VR include embracing new technology in areas like rentals, ski school booking and lift tickets. Additionally, Katz emphasizes that ski areas across the industry need to be more consistently inclusive, especially among communities of color. “It’s the right thing to do, but it’s also the smart thing to do because that is where population growth is happening, especially in the United States,” he says. “How we diversify the sport and realize this is where we need to be in the next 10 or 20 years is something we collectively need to do a better job of.”

Similarly, he argues against restricting access to the slopes, even as photos of long lift lines at Vail are a favorite on social media. “When people say, ‘Well, you should put more restrictions, and we don’t want people to come skiing,’ it’s like, who shouldn’t come?” Katz says. “I don’t want to be the one telling a family that they can’t ski this weekend because other people don’t want you there. I understand some resorts are going to take that attitude. That’s not going to be our approach.” The answer, he adds, is to invest in new lifts and terrain, and more parking. “The minute you stop thinking about how you bring new people in, you’re going to start declining,” he adds, recalling the numerous ski area closures in the 1970s.

As Katz leads VR into its next phase, he remains optimistic—driven, perhaps, by the freedom and exhilaration of skiing that he’s cherished since he was a kid. When asked what advice he’d give retroactively to Vail founders Pete Seibert and Earl Eaton, when they stood atop what would become the Back Bowls, catching that first glimmer of possibility, Katz answered succinctly: “Go for it.” 

Cindy Hirschfeld is a consulting editor for Skiing History as well as a frequent contributor to The New York Times.

The community supported a local ski area—until bigger and better options opened in the high country.

The Chautauqua Movement, which started in 1874 in Chautauqua Lake, New York, initially focused on religious education, but soon expanded to include the arts, culture, entertainment and literature along with an appreciation of the great outdoors. After visiting, Theodore Roosevelt deemed the Chautauqua Institution, the movement’s initial setting, “a gathering that is typically American in that it is typical of America at its best,” according to the Colorado Chautauqua’s website.

Since 1898, the Colorado Chautauqua has operated on a mesa in southwest Boulder. With its original structures intact, it is the only Chautauqua west of the Mississippi that has continuously operated largely in the way it was originally built. Meanwhile, 40 miles of trails framed by Boulder’s famed Flatirons—rock faces named for their resemblance to old-fashioned clothing irons—weave through the surrounding Chautauqua Park.

Few of today’s estimated one million annual visitors know that the site was once home to the Chautauqua Mesa Ski Area.

Photo top: Skiing in the shadow of the Flatirons. University of Colorado 1957 Yearbook

Operating on and off from 1947–1952, then re-opened in the early 1960s, the area relied on a 200-foot rope tow, powered by a gasoline engine from a World War II Dodge army truck, to service three lighted ski jumps and one slope, according to Boulder historian Silvia Pettem.

Strong Backs Wanted

In October 1947, sporting goods entrepreneur Bert Street asked local officials for help in creating a place for Boulder residents to ski in their backyard. The town cleared a portion of Chautauqua Park of rocks and other obstacles.

By January 1948, enough work was completed to create a children’s ski jump out of dirt and snow. It was so well received that a junior ski championship was held on the slope, attracting 100 competitors. Felix Dunbar—recently back from World War II, when he served with the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division—was recruited as a ski instructor.

“Operation Big Push” began in October 1948, soliciting more than 25 volunteers with strong backs to clear the runs. It was a hump trying to get University of Colorado at Boulder (CU) students to volunteer. As organizer Steve Bradley complained in the Boulder Daily Camera (Nov. 1, 1948), “Hardly a skier exists who enjoys splintering his skis or ripping off his steel edges by running over hidden rocks, but pitifully few of them seem to be willing to do anything about it, if it means work.”

Boulder’s junior chamber of commerce also invited “girls or women” to be on hand, “for there will be lighter jobs for them,” the local press reported. The City of Boulder and the National Guard supplied the bulldozers, trucks, shovels and picks to help remove rocky debris. The guard used it as an
opportunity to train bulldozer operators.

After various upgrades, the Chautauqua Mesa Ski Area formally opened in January 1949, offering “slatsmen” as they were often called, three ski jumps of varying heights, for beginner to advanced levels. In addition, the area boasted one ski slope and an extended rope tow, which had been moved uphill, as well as night-skiing lights and field telephones connecting the base and summit lift operators.

Lift tickets cost one dollar, and just 50 cents for children under age 12. “Most skiers bought surplus boots and skis left over from the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division,” wrote Boulder historian Pettem.

Peggy S., once a student at CU, located a mile away, commented on her ski experience on the Colorado Ski History website: “I skied at Chataqua (sic) Mesa, Boulder, in 1949, with my Phys Ed ski class (for credit) during winter quarter of my freshman year. As an absolute beginner, I found the rope tow so hard to ride that I preferred to remove my skis and walk up.”

Undeterred, she continued, “We were glad there was just enough snow to go there at all, after initial lessons on the lawn by the freshman girls’ dorm. At least we learned to walk on skis, fall, get up, and snowplow.”

During Summer 1949, volunteers again improved the slopes, clearing away even more rocks and raking and seeding to reduce erosion. (Jane Barker, Daily Camera, Oct. 24, 1971).

Going Downhill

As quickly as it came, Chautauqua Mesa’s ski history went downhill in the early 1950s. Plans called for a permanent “city ski jump” and a ski school to capitalize on the increasing interest in the sport. But these improvements came to a halt thanks to vandalism, a lack of snow and the Chinook winds common to Boulder’s highly variable winter climate.

An attempt to rekindle skiing at Chautauqua Mesa in the early 1960s lasted only a short while. Jumps were built and slopes were groomed by hand, but again, inconsistent snowfall thwarted skiers.

The year 1962, though a significant one for Colorado skiing, did not bode well for Chautauqua Mesa. Eldora Mountain ski area opened in nearby Nederland, and lifts began turning at Vail and other big-time resorts in Summit County. Now there were plenty of opportunities for Boulder-area skiers to log vertical, although they had to travel a bit higher and farther west of the Flatirons.

Occasionally, though, in the hours just after a major snowstorm and before the intense Colorado sun radiates its heat, you can see skiers and snowboarders poach the same slopes picked clean two generations ago as they follow the tracks of history in Chautauqua Park. 

Jeff Blumenfeld is a vice president of ISHA and past president of the North American Snowsports Journalists Association. A fellow of the Explorers Club, he’s covered the adventure field for ExpeditionNews.com for 30 years.

Utah resort's massive expansion will make it one of the largest ski areaas in North America.

Deer Valley Resort, up valley from Utah’s Park City, has long been a go-to for the well-to-do, offering impeccably groomed skiing, high-end amenities and stellar accommodations while maintaining what may be the highest service levels found at any ski hill in the world.

Photo, top of page: Beginning in 1947, Snow Park ski area featured lodgepole-pine lift towers. Ski Utah photo.

It may not be the steepest, the deepest or the gnarliest of mountains, but it’s one of the most rarefied Alpine experiences anywhere on snow. It starts when staff members rush to help you unload your gear at the Snow Park base area. It continues as you make turns on the mountain’s state-of-the-art corduroy, knowing that the hill limits the number of skiers on busy days. It also remains one of the few resorts in the U.S. that is still a skiers-only mountain—alongside neighboring Alta (about an hour’s drive away) and Vermont’s Mad River Glen. Then factor in luxury lodging and dining to match, and you have one of the most finely tuned ski experiences anywhere.

Now the resort has rolled out phase one of an extraordinary expansion that will more than double its size. Once complete, the massive growth project, tagged with the corporate moniker “Expanded Excellence,” will add 3,700 acres of new terrain, plus hotels, restaurants and retail. As a result Deer Valley will be one of the largest resorts in North America (though only the second-largest in the valley, behind Park City Mountain Resort). But first, take a look at where this luxury lair got its start.

At First, Frog Valley

Initially, what is now Deer Valley was called Frog Valley. Trails in the present-day Snow Park area were built by the Works Progress Administration to spur winter recreation and employment in the region. In 1936 some 600 people came via a rail connection from Salt Lake City up Parley’s Canyon to the Park City/Snow Park Winter Carnival .

The first lift-serviced access in the area opened on Flagstaff Mountain in 1947 and was named the Snow Park Ski Area. It was founded by two Park City locals, Bob Burns and Otto Carpenter, who salvaged tram machinery from disused mines, then felled aspens and lodgepole pines to construct rudimentary lift towers. Skiers paid $1.50 to ride the lifts for the day. The resort was in operation until 1968, and today’s Burns and Carpenter lifts, at the base of Bald Eagle Mountain, are named after the ski area’s original owners.

Deer Valley Is Born

Deer Valley came to life under Edgar and Polly Stern, who had spent years working in the broadcasting and hospitality industries. In 1948, the Stern family launched Royal Street Corporation in New Orleans. The company owned and operated NBC affiliate stations in Louisiana and Alabama before transitioning into real estate development and then resort and hotel operations. Its successes included the Royal Orleans Hotel, located in the heart of the French Quarter, and the legendary Stanford Court Hotel on Nob Hill in San Francisco.

The Sterns first visited Park City in 1968 and purchased the existing Treasure Mountain Ski Area (now known as Park City Mountain Resort) in 1971, along with additional land that would later become part of Deer Valley. After a few years, they sold Park City Mountain to Nick Badami (U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame Class of 2011) to focus on developing Deer Valley Resort.

As envisioned by the Sterns, Deer Valley would provide a service-oriented skiing experience, with fine accommodations and memorable dining. They intended to create this five-star destination resort from the ground up. While many individuals contributed to making Deer Valley a reality, 1952 Olympic champion and freestyle skiing pioneer Stein Eriksen was at the forefront. Eriksen advised Edgar Stern on creating the world’s finest ski area and best ski hotel. He then served as the director of skiing at Deer Valley for 35 years while fronting the Stein Eriksen Lodge, which celebrates his legacy.

When the resort opened on December 26, 1981, it had five chairlifts, 35 ski runs on Bald Eagle and Bald mountains, and two day lodges. Over the next 38 years, additional facilities were built, which up until the expansion totaled 21 chairlifts, 103 runs and six bowls spread over 2,026 acres.

In 1987, Roger Penske, an owner at Stein Eriksen Lodge since its inception, became a partner in Deer Valley Resort. The founder of Penske Corporation, which includes Penske Truck Leasing and Detroit Diesel, he also owns Team Penske, the most successful team in the history of the Indianapolis 500.

The expanded ownership helped with the launch of the Crown Point lift in 1991, along with the resort’s first high-speed quad, the Carpenter Express, on Bald Eagle Mountain. The Red Cloud and Viking lifts were built on Flagstaff Mountain, and in 1993, the Northside Express opened. New high-speed quads replaced the Carpenter and Wasatch lifts in 1996. In 1997, the Wasatch triple was relocated to make room for the Quincy lift, and the Deer Crest quad was constructed. 

A major terrain expansion occurred during the 1998–1999 season, when two additional mountains were added: Little Baldy Peak and Empire Canyon.

During the 2002 Winter Olympics, Deer Valley hosted freestyle mogul as well as aerial and Alpine slalom events. It has continued to host World Cup and Olympic Qualifier competitions.

New Owners, Rival Development

In October 2017, it was announced that Deer Valley was to be purchased by a newly formed entity between KSL Capital Partners and the Aspen Skiing Company, which soon became the Alterra Mountain Company.

The ski area’s story took an even more unexpected turn in 2019 with the announcement of the Mayflower Mountain Resort, a significant and independent development situated on the backside of Deer Valley Resort, adjacent to the gated Deer Crest subdivision. It would face Jordanelle Reservoir and lie close to U.S. 40.

Mayflower’s developer, Extell Development Company—best known for Manhattan trophy real estate—planned to build three hotels, with at least one of five-star caliber, for a total of around 800 rooms. One hundred of those hotel rooms would offer reduced rates to military personnel, since the project was partly funded by Utah’s Military Installation Development Authority (MIDA). Under the agreement, Extell will receive a portion of the property tax generated from the development in exchange for the reduced fees for the military. The developer anticipated adding more than 1,500 residential units. Plans were also in place for bars, restaurants and retail stores that would occupy approximately 250,000 square feet of commercial space. New ski lifts were part of the design, too.

Extell and Deer Valley’s owner, Alterra Mountain Company, signed a 199-year lease in 2019 to enable a connection between the two resorts in the future. Given the nature of the ski business, the smart money was on an eventual joint project. If the plans for this adjacent resort sound familiar, it’s because they became the blueprint for the current expansion. In August 2024, Extell and Deer Valley announced a collaboration, with the two resorts becoming one under the Deer Valley moniker. The first phase of the expansion is scheduled to open this coming winter.

Expanded Elegance

Deer Valley is now poised to become one of the largest ski resorts in North America. When “Expanded Excellence” is completed, the resort will feature more than 5,726 acres of skiable terrain across 10 mountain peaks, accessible by 37 chairlifts serving 238 ski runs, as well as the new Deer Valley East Village at the base. This development comes as the state prepares for the 2034 Olympics hosted by Salt Lake City.

The new base village will host ski school facilities, children’s programs, rentals, retail and dining options. For those who’ve routinely been caught up in Park City traffic on the way to Deer Valley, the good news is that the village provides an additional gateway via U.S. Route 40, bypassing most of the congestion.

The East Village debuted in November 2024 with the opening of the new Grand Hyatt Deer Valley. It’s an elegant and well-sited hotel with a vast, atrium-style lobby that offers expansive views across Jordanelle Reservoir and the Uinta Mountains. It meets the development’s MIDA requirements, with 100 rooms designated at discounted rates for military personnel.

Yet the hotel is also chic enough that it hosted the opening party for the Sundance Film Festival in its ballroom in January 2025. The Grand Hyatt has 387 guest rooms, 40 suites, 55 private residences and nearly 40,000 square feet of conference and event space. The pool deck features multiple hot tubs. The signature restaurant is Remington Hall, and the atrium serves “High Chocolate,” the hotel’s answer to afternoon tea in a London hotel.

Next door, construction is underway on the new Four Seasons Resort and Residences Deer Valley. There’s a rumor that Aman Resorts, a hotel chain that targets billionaires, will build here, too. The company already operates the super-luxurious Amangiri desert resort on Utah’s southern border, as well as the Amangani in Jackson, Wyoming.

On a recent visit, I was amazed by the vastness of the new terrain, which stretches for miles. The resort sprawls east of Bald Mountain and includes South Peak, Park Peak, Big Dutch, Pioche and Hail Mountains. Many runs have already been cut and include open intermediate terrain plus some steep slopes, bowls and glades for expert skiers. The Green Monster, a new run snaking down the mountain for 4.8 miles, opened in February 2025. It’s an easy run that beginners can enjoy, extending from Bald Mountain down to the new East Village.

The expansion began rolling out in the 2024–2025 season and is expected to gain momentum in the 2025–2026 season and proceed over the next few years. Deer Valley will continue to limit the number of daily guests and intends to remain a skiers-only mountain.

For those who enjoy Deer Valley, the resort has long epitomized a level of service and perfection that’s set a high standard in the ski world. The question is whether this beloved enclave of privileged powder and expert grooming will retain its core values and elite standards across its greatly expanded footprint. 

 A brief history of skiing in Bariloche.

While much of haute skiing culture in South America centers around Chile’s Valle Nevado and ritzy Portillo, as well as Las Leñas in Argentina’s wine region of Mendoza, the Argentinian mountain town of San Carlos de Bariloche has a richer history of European immigration and, therefore, deeper roots in mountaineering and skiing. Like Aspen and Chamonix, Bariloche, as it’s commonly known, was a real town long before it became a ski center.

Photo top: In 1936, Innsbruck’s Hans Nöbl chose Cerro Catedral as the location for a
world-class ski resort. Courtesy Club Andino Bariloche.

The Early Years

The Cerro Catedral ski area’s birth and infancy are inextricably tied to Bariloche’s growth (translated from the Mapuche Indian dialect, the town’s name means “people from the other side of the mountain”). The mountain Cerro Catedral was named for its resemblance to a cathedral.

Argentina, like North America, is a melting pot, especially Bariloche. German and Swiss migrants first arrived in the town before the 20th century dawned, bringing many architectural, cultural and gastronomic influences that came to define the region.

Ruben Macaya grew up skiing on Cerro Catedral and raced for Argentina in the late 1960s. He later coached the U.S. Ski Team at the 1984 Winter Olympics, then coached in Aspen and Vail and for decades was the head coach for the Sun Valley race program. Macaya explains that the first European settlers arrived at Bariloche in 1891. Most of these folks arrived via the glacial lakes and Indian trails over the low pass from Chile, which had developed a thriving German community composed mostly of liberal refugees from the failed European revolutions of 1848.

Macaya relates that in 1903, Francisco Pascasio Moreno, a pioneering scientist and explorer, donated land near Bariloche for a national park. In 1922 Parque Nacional de Sur was established as the first national park in South America and the third in the Americas. Argentina’s powerful national parks office planned to make Bariloche into a touristy, European-looking town using its own public funds.

Beginning in 1913, a German named Ricardo Roth had the concession to the road and the boats that transported people between Chile and Bariloche, a four- or five-day trip. On the Argentine side was another German, shop owner Carlos Weitherholdt, now considered the founder of San Carlos de Bariloche, which sits at an elevation of 2,600 feet on the south shore of Lake Nahuel Huapi. In the other direction, toward Buenos Aires and the Atlantic, stretched the desert prairie, the Pampas. Crossing the Pampas via stagecoach or ox cart took four to six weeks—it was like crossing the Great Plains in North America.

Just before World War I, construction began on a narrow-gauge railroad from Buenos Aires to Bariloche and, eventually, to the Pacific coast. But the war halted investment by European and American financiers. Argentina profited from the war mainly by exporting beef and horses for use by European armies. Osvaldo Ancinas, the Bariloche-born Olympic skier who settled in Squaw Valley in 1960, jokes that Argentina raises “not only the fastest horses, but the best-tasting horses!”

After the war, Austrians, Italians and Slovenians arrived, fleeing the political and financial chaos accompanying the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. At Bariloche they found a region as gorgeous as their beloved Alps and Dolomites.

The railroad from Buenos Aires finally reached Bariloche in 1934. At that point, wealthy folks from the city made the town and its surrounding mountains a holiday getaway.

By the 1940s, Bariloche had grown from a remote regional outpost of 1,000 inhabitants into a bustling city of 5,000 residents and Argentina’s epicenter of skiing and hiking, with around 55,000 annual visitors. After World War II another influx of Europeans—refugees from both Axis and Allied nations—came to start a new life in a setting that felt European.

Now close to a quarter of a million inhabitants live in the region (Bariloche has a permanent population of about 145,000), and as the gateway to Cerro Catedral, the city welcomes more than 600,000 tourists each winter alone. The Alpine influence still shines brightly, from torchlight descents down Catedral’s slopes during the annual Winter Festival (Fiesta de la Nieve) to the veal Milanese lunches pounded out for diners in the mountain refugios to locally made chocolates that would knock the socks off Ferrero Rocher.

A Ski Area Is Born

Juan Javier Neumeyer was one of the first physicians to establish a practice in Bariloche. Argentine-born to Swiss parents, he spent several years in Switzerland and became an accomplished climber and skier. In 1930, Neumeyer introduced the Bavarian gymnast and climber Otto Meiling to skiing; their climbing partners included Reynaldo Knapp, a British pilot who set up a tour-guiding service, and Swiss-trained surveyor Emilio Frey.

In 1931, these four friends founded the Club Andino de Bariloche to promote mountain sports. In 1934, Frey was appointed the first superintendent of Nahuel Huapi National Park. The four founders built seven refugios, the first one on 4,500-foot Cerro Otto, four miles west of Bariloche. Today, all seven huts continue to shelter skiers and climbers throughout the millions of acres of wilderness in both summer and winter.

Catedral’s roots were planted shortly thereafter. In 1936 the National Parks Directorate signed a five-year contract with Innsbruck-born skier Hans Nöbl to scout a suitable location near Bariloche for a winter resort of international caliber. Nöbl came well-recommended: Working for the Agnelli family, owners of Fiat, he had helped manage the launch of Italy’s Sestriere ski resort in 1934 and then became head of its ski school. According to Andreas Praher, author of Austrian Skiing in the Nazi Era, Nöbl avoided entanglement with the Nazi element while he was in the Innsbruck Ski Club, but got the Sestriere gig after teaching Mussolini’s sons to ski.

Macaya explains that Nöbl came to Buenos Aires and charmed the wealthy skiers there. Arriving in Bariloche, he surveyed

several potential sites for the big resort. “There were two other locations he considered, but at one of them you would have had to take a boat to get to the ski resort, and the other was closer to the Chilean border than to Bariloche, so they ruled it out,” explains Roberto Taddeo, nephew of Osvaldo Ancinas and a well-known ski coach.

Bariloche native Vicente Ojeda, who grew up to be a downhill ski champion, remembers that “Nöbl was tall and very skinny with big, blond hair. He was a classy dresser and an elegant skier. [Local] people didn’t really like him; he was arrogant and business-like, pinching money wherever he could, so people were a little wary of him. But he did a lot for the town of Bariloche, and we got Catedral because of him.”

Nöbl’s eventual choice bore sweet fruit almost immediately. In 1938—the year he settled full time in Bariloche—he directed the design of a tram to Cerro Catedral’s 6,300-foot summit. The tram parts were manufactured in Italy before World War II broke out but sat on a dock until trade resumed in 1945. In 1940 the first drag lifts were installed at Catedral, with financing arranged by Dr. Antonio Lynch, president of the Club Argentino de Ski (CAS), founded in 1938. The lifts ran

from the base area to an elevation of 5,600 feet. Two years later, the first ski lodge on Cerro Catedral was completed (managed by CAS), on what was then the highest point of the ski area. It was named Refugio Lynch, and it was there that three-year-old Ruben Macaya came to live with his mother, who worked as the hostel’s chef and housekeeping manager for the concessionaire, Carlos Oertle.

“Oertle ended up being like a grandfather to me,” Macaya says. “When [my mother] got the job cooking at Refugio Lynch, it was a five-star lodge. The whole thing was unbelievable. All the chairs and sofas were cowhide, hand hewn and hand painted, and there were paintings from famous European and South American [artists]. The place was first class. When my mom got there, she said, ‘Oh, my God! Where have I landed? This

place is fantastic.’ It had beds in three big rooms, one for women and two for men. It had room for 15 women and 28 men.”

The resort lay within the national park, and development was funded largely by the national parks office. Park employees built the roads and infrastructure, at times carrying loads up the mountain on foot. The Argentinian government also invited private investment for hotels within the park. In one case, an Italian dowager, the Contessa Gambona, built the Hotel Catedral, and in 1944 the first base accommodations were opened to Buenos Aires elite.

Catalina Reynal, La Madrina (the Godmother)

Osvaldo Ancinas recalls, “I started skiing in August 1944, when I was 10 years old. We had a 1,500-meter surface lift, and the old cable car that was installed in 1950 took us up. I started skiing at the school of Catalina Reynal.” Reynal came from a wealthy cattle-ranching family, with thousands of acres on the Pampas. She became concerned that the children of the community couldn’t afford to ski. “She wanted the children of

Bariloche to learn,” Ancinas says. “So she’d take all the kids up to the mountain in a truck with a cover on it. They had 18 feet of snow at the bottom of the mountain. She always told me Bariloche needed to keep the kids busy with skiing. Her friend Antonio Pelligrino got together the skis and boots and such. What a wonderful woman! She and Antonio were how I learned to love to ski. She introduced me to the sport I still love today.”

Macaya once visited Reynal at her home in Buenos Aires. “I asked her what drove her to help the kids,” he recalls. “She said that at the time, when you went to Hotel Catedral it was just the wealthy elite of Buenos Aires, and that the locals were shut out. ‘How can the locals learn to ski if we don’t help them?’ She got instructors to work with kids on the mountain. She was a visionary in that regard.”

Cosmopolitan Ski School

The first two ski instructors at Catedral were Nöbl and Meiling. “They did not like each other,” Macaya says. “Hans was more interested in big money and exposure, whereas Meiling was a real mountain man—he despised the wealthy people of Buenos Aires. His school was for the people, whereas Hans’s was more for the elites.”

At the end of World War II, Dinko Bertoncelj was 16 years old. When his father was shot, he fled from Slovenia to Austria and spent two years in a British-run refugee camp. He managed to climb and ski and was encouraged by an Austrian coach to imigrate to Argentina. Bertoncelj was still a teenager when he landed in Bariloche but soon became a leader in the mountaineering community, putting up first ascents and joining expeditions to the Himalaya and Antarctica.

“His first job was running the boilers at the Hotel Catedral,” says Macaya. “He skied with the family that owned the concessions.” Bertoncelj traveled back to Austria to get certified in ski instruction at St. Christof and also taught in the United States before returning to Bariloche. “By about 1960, he was head of the CAS ski school,” Macaya says. “There were so many Europeans in Bariloche, they were teaching each other to be instructors.” Eventually Bertoncelj took charge of ski instruction for the Argentine army.

Ancinas remembers taking lessons from a Polish instructor, Andres Nowortya. “He’d say, ‘You got to bend your knees some more or I’m not gonna teach you!’ And then we had another coach, he’d say, ‘We’re going to the mountain to be away from everybody and be closer to God.’ And we walked. We carried everything by foot. Even as a small boy, standing up with snow up to my chest! And we became the first members of the ski patrol in 1950–51. I was 16.”

Boom Years

The ski scene at Cerro Catedral boomed in the 1950s. Then airline service to Bariloche began in 1967.

“Billy Reynal [nephew of Catalina] was a genius of marketing,” says Roberto Taddeo. Reynal, who had an American mother, left school early to work in the oil business. He loved to ski and loved airplanes, so he acquired Austral Airlines and organized a holding company, Lagos del Sur. Through this company, Reynal developed several new chairlifts on Catedral, which opened a vast bowl east of Refugio Lynch. Then he created Sol Jet, a tourist company, and built several mid-price hotels both in the city and at the ski area.

His goal was to democratize skiing, making it accessible to a middle-class market. Austral flew passenger routes day and night—shuttling skiers from Buenos Aires to stay in Lagos del Sur hotels in Bariloche and Catedral. But Austral competed with the government-owned Aerolineas Argentinas, and in 1980 the country’s military dictatorship nationalized Reynal’s businesses. Reynal left to live in the U.S. For a decade, the management of Catedral was split chaotically between two companies, one controlled by the dictatorship. Civilian rule returned after the 1982 Falklands War. Eventually Reynal and his son returned, and they resumed control of Catedral from 1997 to 2001.

Bariloche Today

“When I left Bariloche in 1960, there were only 25,000 people living there,” says Ancinas. “Now there are 160,000. A friend told me recently there were 21,000 people skiing on Catedral one day. It’s a big change.”

Ancinas traveled to his hometown last spring to celebrate his 90th birthday on the mountain. While there, he realized that some of the hazards have changed. “Now at the Refugio Lynch, they ski by at 100 miles an hour!” he says. “When I was young, you had to watch out because the foxes would steal your lunch!”

“Yes!” laughs Macaya. “Once, years ago, the foxes actually ate through the phone cables. They ate Osvaldo’s long thongs while he was having lunch at the top of the mountain.”

Catedral isn’t the only ski area near Bariloche—Winter Park is the “town” lift network on close-in Cerro Otto. But those who grew up there insist Catedral is by far the most beautiful. Ancinas calls it the most beautiful ski resort in the world.

By day skiers can shred 1,500 acres of in-bounds terrain and another 1,500 acres of backcountry, much of it with stunning views of colossal glacially carved lakes dotted with islands, smaller Alpine lakes, thousand-year-old deciduous and evergreen forests, and volcanos in both Chile and Argentina. (They still occasionally erupt.) Bootpack through a notch off the summit’s backside to access millions of acres of pristine national park. Sunrises and sunsets ignite the silhouetted mountains of Patagonia in a fiery burst of red, orange and gold. And by night, a billion stars illuminate the lazy haze of the Milky Way. 

Jay Flemma practices law and recently moved from upstate New York to Boise, Idaho. He also writes about golf for websites owned by ABC, CBS and NBC.

How a sleepy Swiss resort underwent development on steroids. 

Switzerland’s Andermatt was among the earliest Alpine resorts. (The name, which translates to “at the meadow,” refers to the town’s location, near Gotthard Pass.) Well-to-do adventurers began summering here at the height of the Romantic era in the early 19th century, and skiing arrived with Swiss army trainees around 1890. Historic but sleepy for much of its existence, Andermatt went into fast-forward mode in 2005 with the arrival of an Egyptian billionaire, who invested $1.4 billion to create one of the most luxurious resorts in the Alps. In 2022, Vail Resorts upped the ante, buying a 55 percent stake in the development.

This is a tale with as many turns as a slalom course.

Set at 4,737 feet elevation (1,440 meters) in a dramatic valley with steep mountains on all sides, Andermatt is a charming town of venerable Alpine architecture, quaint shops and onion-domed churches. You are, indeed, in the land of Heidi.

It’s also surrounded by impressive slopes, with two main ski areas: Gemsstock, where intermediate and expert skiers can find challenging runs and a vertical drop of nearly 5,000 feet, and the gentler Nätschen/Oberalp area on the Gütsch, where easier slopes await on the sunnier side of the resort.

At first glance, it’s a very nice and well-situated resort, without the name recognition of Zermatt or St. Moritz. But then you spot the sleekly modern new hotels and apartments at the edge of town, with cutting-edge Alpine architecture that blends in with the centuries-old neighbors. Due to restrictive zoning, those new buildings are a rare sight in any Swiss ski resort, and they tell a remarkable story of revitalization, unfolding by the day.

Queen Victoria and the Swiss Army

Andermatt sits in the Urseren Valley and is part of the Saint-Gotthard Massif. It is essentially the center of the Alps, where north-south and east-west meet in Switzerland. This is also the headwaters of the Rhône River, flowing westward and south toward the Mediterranean. A few miles in the other direction, the Rhine River emerges and heads north and west to empty into the North Sea. The snowstorms of the central Alps also tend to converge here, making it one of the best powder spots in the country.

Three of Switzerland’s most significant mountain passes also meet here—the Furka, the Gotthard and the Oberalp—making the area an important crossroads even before Roman times. Archaeologists note traces of temporary Neolithic camps (around 4000 B.C.E.), but the earliest documented evidence of permanent settlement was by the Walsers, a Germanic tribe, in the second century C.E. They gave their name to the region and its modern inhabitants.

The main barrier to north-south communication across the region was the raging Reuss River. The first Teufelsbrücke (Devil’s Bridge) across the torrent was built in 1220, opening a mule-train track to Italy. Gradual improvements to the road eventually allowed the passage of horse-drawn coaches, beginning around 1775. The strategic bridge, located about half a mile north of Andermatt’s town center, was the object of a bloody battle in 1799 between Napoleon’s troops and detachments of the allied Russian and Austrian armies. But Napoleon then won the battle for Zurich, which rendered meaningless the Russian success at Andermatt.

The town provided hostel services to the mail coaches crossing Gotthard Pass daily. The very first Baedeker guidebook, published in 1854, listed hiking trails, bridle paths, coach roads and inns in the region. Soon enough, luxurious hotels went up. Queen Victoria came to stay at the Grand Hotel Bellevue, which opened in 1872. That year, work began on a rail tunnel under Gotthard Pass. When it opened in 1882, trans-Alpine traffic bypassed Andermatt and the tourist trade cratered.

However, Andermatt’s enviable strategic position kept it valuable for military purposes. The Swiss army established a major base here in the late 19th century, intended to be a wartime headquarters if the country were invaded. This required construction of a rail spur in 1914, which also enabled skiers to schuss about two miles and 1,200 vertical feet down the valley and ride the train back up. Andermatt got its first proper ski lift in 1937.

Throughout the mid-20th century, middle-class Swiss families favored the resort for holidays, even as wealthier international skiers went to better-known slopes like Gstaad, Zermatt and St. Moritz. The first cable car to the Gurschenfirn glacier on top of Gemsstock opened in 1964, allowing for summer skiing (since 2005, that glacier has been wrapped in a protective cloth to slow melting).

Around the same time, Hollywood came knocking, and scenes from Goldfinger were filmed here, including the famous car chase on the Furka Pass, with Sean Connery as James Bond driving his classic Aston Martin.

That brush with fame aside, Andermatt remained a quiet ski town in the middle of the country, a parochial vacation area that offered untouched powder stashes for savvy ski bums. It was like any other quaint Swiss town, though this one happened to have lift-serviced skiing at its doorstep. It was otherwise notable as a quick stop on the famous Glacier Express train that runs 180 miles between Zermatt and St. Moritz.

By the turn of the 21st century, the town was languishing, and the ski area was losing money. In 2004, the army base was downgraded to a training center, and the town lost most of its military revenue. The region faced economic crisis.

A Fast-Paced Revival

Then along came Samih Sawiris, an Egyptian billionaire. He’d amassed his fortune through his family’s investments in OCI N.V., a global producer and distributor of nitrogen and methanol products, as well as from his construction company, Orascom Development, which builds and operates resorts, including luxurious El Gouna on the Red Sea.

In 2005, Sawiris flew over Andermatt in a military helicopter, invited by a friend in the Swiss defense ministry who’d asked his opinion of what might be done following the departure of the army. Sawiris was impressed by the vast, open mountain terrain, the lack of development and the proximity to Geneva, Zurich and Milan. This eventually led to an invitation from the Swiss government to help develop Andermatt.

Sawiris agreed, with the provision that the authorities would permit him to sell real estate to foreigners, a relatively rare occurrence in Switzerland, which allows foreign ownership only in certain parts of the country. Those sales would help fuel the project. Sawiris also asked for 250 acres to create a mountain development, and the decision was put to local residents as a referendum. Ninety-six percent of Andermatt’s citizens agreed, and the regional and Swiss governments also backed the project—remarkable in a country where the bureaucracy can be daunting.

The reaction in the ski world went from eye-rolling to astonishment in the blink of an eye. Andermatt, that half-forgotten mountain town with remnants of an army presence and vintage infrastructure, was suddenly the recipient of development worth approximately $1.4 billion. The changes started with a bang, thanks to the construction of the Chedi, an opulent five-star hotel (and sister property of the Chedi Muscat in Oman) that was built where the Grand Hotel Bellevue had once stood. Winter rates start at around $1,000 a night; if you want to own, prices at the hotel’s residences begin at $1.8 million.

Then came three Michelin-starred restaurants and the brand-new, 650-seat Andermatt Concert Hall in 2019, with an opening performance by the Berlin Philharmonic. The 18-hole Andermatt Swiss Alps Golf Course was opened, and serious upgrades to the lift system have commenced. There will be 42 multi-million-dollar chalets, and an astonishing 42 luxury apartment buildings are under construction or planned. Prices at a complex like House Steinadler begin at $1.3 million for a one-bedroom unit, with the right to a parking space included (which the developers say is worth about $43,000). Some 30 more apartment buildings are scheduled to roll out in the coming decades, and there will be more four and five-star hotel properties. It is the biggest ski project the Alps (and perhaps the world) has ever seen, and Phase One was completed in 2019.

In terms of skiing, the resort stretches beyond Andermatt and its valley to the neighboring resorts of Sedrun and Disentis. The latter lies several valleys away and is famed for its astonishingly beautiful 8th-century Benedictine monastery and for being the heart of Romansch-speaking Switzerland. (The nation’s fourth language is Latin-based and the daily tongue of some 60,000 people.) It’s like traveling to a foreign country within the boundaries of a ski resort, albeit one with about 75 miles of varied terrain, 110 miles of trails and 33 lifts. Ski to Sedrun and take a ski safari to Disentis via the Oberalp Pass, and at day’s end you can board a train to return to Andermatt on the same tracks that the Glacier Express plies every day.

Vail Resorts Steps In

As if this weren’t enough, enter Vail Resorts. The company wanted to expand into Europe, and Andermatt needed a seasoned partner to shoulder some of the workload and financial responsibility for Phase Two of the development. It seemed a perfect fit.

The news became official on March 27, 2022, when Vail Resorts announced that it had made its first European acquisition as the new majority stakeholder of Switzerland’s Andermatt-Sedrun Sport AG—Andermatt for short. The company controls and operates all of Andermatt-Sedrun’s ski-related assets. That includes lifts, most on-mountain restaurants and the ski school operation.

Vail Resorts acquired a 55 percent ownership stake, while the former majority owners retain 40 percent. A smaller group of existing shareholders owns the remaining 5 percent. Vail’s investment is about $160 million, and the company has taken on the operating and marketing responsibility. Some $118 million will be used for improvements at Andermatt.

Vail also immediately included unlimited and unrestricted access to the resort on the 2022–23 Epic Pass. While this is Vail’s first ownership stake in a European resort, Andermatt joins 30 other Alpine resorts already part of the Epic Pass, including five in Austria’s Arlberg and three in France’s Trois Vallées. (Disentis is independently owned and is not part of the Epic Pass.)

Vail plans to replace lifts, upgrade snowmaking and improve and expand on-mountain dining. One senses that this is just the tip of the iceberg. It’s clear that the quiet days of Andermatt are history and that expansion is the route forward, especially with government involvement, private equity and now partial ownership by a publicly traded company. Yet to these eyes, Andermatt still looks relatively tranquil, with plenty of room for more skiers. In a year or two or three, things could be quite different. 

Regular contributor Everett Potter wrote about the annual Swann Galleries ski-poster sale in the May-June 2023 issue.

The cradle of skiing is all grown up.

(Photo top:) In most years, more than 600 skiers push off in a mass start, for a brutal five-mile, 5,000-foot descent marking the season's final run. Der Weisse Rausch race starts at 5:00pm; the piste surface has been churned and mogulled by recreational traffic all day. Ski Arlberg photo.

Under a starry sky, five skiers slowly descend a steep slope using wooden skis, lace-up leather boots and bamboo ski poles. Dressed in woolen blazers with buttons, Tyrolean-style trousers and felt hats with feathers, they employ Hannes Schneider’s Arlberg technique—a stem christie in the fall line, parallel across the hill—to maneuver the long, edgeless skis.

This flashback on snow happened during the opening ceremony of the FIS Alpine Junior World Ski Championships, staged in St. Anton am Arlberg in January 2023. I’d made the trek to Austria’s Tyrol to watch my son Aidan compete in the races—and to explore the history of the resort that calls itself the “cradle of skiing.”

Early Days

St. Anton has evolved in the 600 years since a swineherd named Heinrich Findelkind founded the Hospiz St. Christoph, which offered refuge to travelers caught in blizzards while trying to cross the Arlberg Pass. Back then, St. Anton relied on agriculture and the transport of commodities like salt and silver for its economy.

“Life was really, really hard back then,” says Yannick Rumler, press officer for the Arlberg region and a history buff who shows me around the Museum of St. Anton am Arlberg. Opened in 1980, the museum is housed in the erstwhile Villa Trier, an elegant Art Nouveau chalet built around 1910 as a seasonal getaway for German industrialist and entrepreneur Bernhard Trier. One wood-paneled room is dedicated to ski equipment through the ages, from long wooden skis with Huitfeldt bindings, circa 1905, to Austrian racing champ Karl Schranz’s 1962 Kneissls to the short, shapely Salomon Equipe 10 3Vs on which Mario Matt won the 2001 slalom world championship here. Known as “der Arlberg Adler”—eagle of the Arlberg—Matt now owns the Krazy Kanguruh, a legendary St. Anton après-ski spot.) Elsewhere in the museum, displays chronicle St. Anton’s trajectory from poor farming village to booming international ski resort.

The first person to ski here may have been a Norwegian engineer who came to work on the Arlberg tunnel in the 1880s. But most sources credit Johann Müller, a priest from Warth, as the first. He ordered a pair of skis from Sweden and used them to commute to Lech. In 1901, the Ski-Club Arlberg was founded, and the first ski lessons were taught in Zürs by Viktor Sohm of Bregenz in 1906. Back then, mostly locals learned the sport.

In 1907, Hannes Schneider, St. Anton’s most famous ski legend, started teaching guests at the Hotel Post (built in 1896 by Carl Schuler) and founded the Ski School

Arlberg in 1920. He taught his Arlberg technique all over the world, from Japan to New Hampshire. By the early 1920s, people were traveling to the Arlberg to learn to ski. Amazingly, until 1937, when Austria’s first surface lift was installed in Zürs, many of those early skiers were earning their turns by hiking up (although some did make use of a combination of a motor and toboggan that dragged skiers uphill).

Schneider’s Arlberg progression was all the rage until around 1953, when another local ski instructor, Professor Stefan Kruckenhauser, introduced a novel short-swing turn
in St. Christoph, a part of St. Anton. Wedeln was a dramatic legs-glued-together, heel-thrusting kind of move.

Hints of this history play out in town, too. Inside the Great Valluga, a ski shop that opened in St. Anton in 2020, walls are lined with old hanza sticks, which farmers once used to dry out harvested hay, each branded with the family’s initials. “We want to give old stuff new life as artistic design elements,” says shop manager Philipp Traxl, whose family has been in St. Anton for four generations. The centerpiece of the shop: The front desk is a work of art made from a 175-year-old Nessler spruce with a trunk diameter of nearly four feet.

How the Railroad Changed St. Anton—Twice.

At the museum, Rumler shows me old black-and-white photos detailing the milestones that changed the face of St. Anton. In 1880, the emperor of Austria, Franz Josef, envisioned his empire connected by a railway system, including the longest tunnel in Austria. The Arlberg Railway Tunnel broke ground in 1880 and, with the aid of some 5,000 workers, took only four years to build.

“It was a big accomplishment because they didn’t have any laser tracking or GPS technology,” Rumler says. St. Anton was a major stop on the railway’s east-west route from Innsbruck to Zurich, with the tracks running straight through the center of town. Climbers and skiers began flocking to the Arlberg. It was the place to be.

Over the decades, St. Anton grew in popularity, traffic increased, and trains grew longer. By the 1980s, skiers on the way to the slopes often needed to wait 20 minutes to cross the tracks. When the resort earned the bid to host the 2001 FIS Alpine World Ski Championships, organizers knew the railway was a logistical snafu. The tracks, which had run through town for a century, were rerouted to the south along the edge of the mountains, serving a brand-new station. The relocation monumentally changed the face of St. Anton. The former railway line was transformed into an open space called the Kunstmeile (art mile), a walking path lined with sculptures. The move also made way for a new race finish-line arena and WellCom, a state-of-the-art wellness and recreation center with swimming pools, saunas, a brine steam bath and an event space. The old stone train station is now a private home.

St. Anton on the Silver Screen

Call me starry-eyed, but I loved the museum’s display of movies filmed at the resort. Der Schwarze Blitz (1958) featured the skiing prowess of triple-gold Olympic champ Toni Sailer. The title is Sailer’s nickname, Black Lightning. (The name needs explanation: It could have been “Blitz from Kitz,” but local rival Anderl Molterer had an equal claim, so black-haired Sailer became Schwarze Blitz and white-haired Molterer Weisse Blitz.) In the 1967 Cold War spy thriller The Double Man, Britt Ekland, sporting a fur-trimmed jacket, is chased across the slopes of St. Anton by Yul Brynner. Arguably the best ski-racing movie of all time, Downhill Racer (1969), used footage of actual races, including Schranz at St. Anton. The movie depicts (among other races) St. Anton’s Arlberg-Kandahar race, first staged in 1928. Trier’s villa turned museum also served as the chalet in 2011’s Chalet Girl, starring Felicity Jones.

Ski chase scenes in the 1931 film Der Weisse Rausch, starring Hannes Schneider, Leni Riefenstahl and Rudi Matt, are the inspiration for one of the resort’s most thrilling modern traditions. On closing day each April, a race by that name kicks off with a mass start at the top of the 9,222-foot Valluga Mountain, with 555 skiers and snowboarders racing down a 5.6-mile long course that includes a brutal 500-foot uphill climb and 4,430 vertical feet of descent. The record time is seven minutes, nine seconds, but you’re free to do a leisurely half an hour if, for instance, you ski in a ball gown. It’s a new cult classic.

The Interconnectedness of It All

Modern resort planners had a vision to make the Arlberg the largest interconnected ski resort in Austria. The addition of the Flexenbahn gondola in December 2016 made it possible. Today, you can ski from St. Anton to Zürs to Lech to Warth and back. I join Jan and Guy Colclough, a British couple who winter in St. Anton, to ski to Lech. It’s possible to make it to Lech and back in a day, but you have to start early and ski hell for leather.

Guy and Jan recommend we start late, then après-ski in Lech and take the bus back to St. Anton. “We do not ski back,” Guy tells me. “The run back is just so boring above Lech.” They may be transplants, but I figure the Colcloughs are onto something. We follow the Run of Fame, an 85-kilometer ski circuit with pit stops along the way dedicated to the Arlberg’s ski pioneers and movie stars, many of whom are memorialized in a museum at the Flexenbahn’s top station. We ski past St. Christoph, Stuben and Zürs, stopping at the Trittkopf BBQ station for coffee. Originally constructed in 1962 as a lift terminal, the building now has a modern aesthetic, though the architects incorporated original elements like the massive cable supports and bull wheels. Cantilevered floor-to-ceiling windows frame the Alps, which stretch to the horizon.

A few hours later, we load the Zugerbergbahn, our 10th and final ski lift of the day. A special gondola car pulls in with a table covered in white linen and set with champagne glasses and bottles of Moët & Chandon. “This must be our car,” Jan says to the lift op. “No, ma’am. You must call ahead.” No matter. We head for the Balmalp ski hut at the top for hearty steak salads, a charcuterie board—and prosecco. We will have our bubbles.

When we finally descend into Lech, we have one last celebratory glass of prosecco at the outdoor terrace of the Hotel Krone, a backdrop I recognize from Renée Zellweger’s 2004 film Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. We toast to Princess Diana, who brought William and Harry here for an annual ski vacation in the early 1990s. Then we hop on the bus back to St. Anton.

History in the Hotel

At the museum, I’d seen the 12-kilogram crystal globe won in 1969 by St. Anton ski racer Gertrud Gabl. Schranz took the men’s title that year (and the next), but to see his trophies, I visit his eponymous hotel. His two World Cup globes are the centerpiece of the massive display case in the hotel’s bar. The lobby walls are plastered with photos of the racer posing with celebrities and dignitaries like Audrey Hepburn, Jean-Claude Killy and Queen Elizabeth II. Today Schranz’s wife, Evelyn, and daughters Anna, Christiane and Kathi manage the hotel. You can find them presiding over the check-in desk, running the restaurant or mingling with guests at the bar.

Haute Moments

Between races, my son and I make the pilgrimage to the top of the Valluga, where the Tyrol meets the Vorarlberg. We ride the Galzigbahn, built in 2006 and featuring a Ferris wheel design: gondola cars enter at the top of a giant glass terminal, then rotate counterclockwise to pick up riders on the ground floor. At the top, we transfer to Vallugabahn I, a 45-person cable car built in 1954 that delivers us to Vallugabahn II, where cabins hold just five passengers. It’s like riding a telephone booth through the sky. From the top, we’re treated to spectacular 360-degree panoramas spanning five countries. It is, literally and figuratively, a high point of our trip.

That night, Aidan and I splurge on a seven-course dinner at the Alpin Gourmet Stube, a restaurant that’s earned three Gault Millau Haubens (chef hats), located inside Hotel Gletscherblick (glacier view). When founders Paula and Robert Kathrein opened the original pension in 1966, you could still see the tongue of the Hohe Riffler glacier. Today, the four-star property is run by three generations of their family. Daughter Sandra Jehle-Kathrein, along with her husband, Christian, operates the hotel with help from the granddaughters—Sophia is the patissière and Johanna works in reception and the restaurants.

As we dine on braised veal cheek and beetroot foam soup, our white-gloved waiter delivers new cutlery from a felt box with each course. Sandra sits with her 83-year-old mom at a corner table in the bar, chatting and sipping white wine. “It’s a nightly mother-daughter tradition,” Sandra
explains to me.

While the place honors its history—all three generations of women wear dirndls at dinnertime and the room keys are huge metal lumps—the family is also committed to modernizing in meaningful ways. They’ve renovated the suites with sleek, contemporary finishes and added a luxurious wellness spa with saunas, a steam bath, salt cave and a shimmering blue indoor pool.

Back at the races the next day, I marvel at the talent of today’s fastest junior racers. Benefiting from state-of-the-art equipment and wearing skintight speed suits, they hurtle expertly down St. Anton’s World Cup racecourse, including the notorious and precipitous Eisfall. In 2023, their technique is all pure carving. Hannes Schneider’s Arlberg turn? That’s history. 

Boulder-based journalist and author Helen Olsson had a 10-year career at Skiing Magazine. This is her first article for Skiing History.