First Journey into the Dolomites

Jan 2024 – The Italian Dolomites seem to be one of the last corners of the Alps that all of us had yet to visit at this point in our lives. The only time I had ventured into the Italian Alps was in 2020 on the absolute opposite side of the Dolomites in the Graian Alps just before COVID-19 destroyed skiing and snowboarding, in the traditional sense, for the next nearly two years. I was also alone that trip on a dude’s trip. We had previously attempted going to Kronplatz but that trip was altered because I don’t understand numbers or dates and we went to Nendaz, Switzerland, instead.

We were lucky enough to have enough points in our credit card program for a full week in the Alps, so we landed on Hotel Ambiez in the heart of Madonna di Campiglio: a widely known large Italian slope area in the heart of the Trentino Dolomites which is featured regularly on the FIS World Cup circuit.

Similar to last December (but not quite as bad), there was an odd temperature change in the middle of what should’ve been a cold two weeks. I went into this trip with an open mind knowing full and well I wouldn’t be seeing many big off-piste opportunities for chasing powder. I didn’t know it at the time, but I would receive an enormous surprise during our last day on the mountain.

Straight up, I’ll tell anybody who may be used to driving in a German or even English speaking areas of Europe: prepare for no rules in Italy. It’s standard basically everywhere but ten times worse in the south of Italy. The North reminds me of driving near Washington D.C. in that lane rules mean nothing and neither do posted speed limits. Hopefully this doesn’t bother you like it did me. I think my brain has completely switched to German mode after years of living in Germany…so if things are out of order like they are everywhere in Italy, my brain can’t deal, it seems.

I hadn’t done all that much research on Madonna di Campiglio in the months prior to when I booked our hotel. I should have. More on that shortly.

This was an interesting trip. A lot of surprises in both good and bad ways and we’ve just never really experienced Italian ski culture before. Also had a few firsts on this trip. We’ve been so busy visiting places in the German and French-speaking parts of the Alps that we’ve seemingly just never had the time to make the long journey to the land of red wine, coffee, and pasta. The Italian Alps being minimum six hours away doesn’t help, either.

I suppose this is the part where I talk about the slopes and everything connected with them. That was mostly outstanding. Per the norm, I’ll begin with the penultimate parent topic: ski school.

The official village website lists a ton of schools both ski and specific to snowboarding courses. I browsed most of the ski schools and came to realize that a lot of the schools offer minimum five and six day courses. We could’ve done this but, to be totally honest, after four days of slope time even I need an off day to spend at the pool or slowly walking around town. I found Scuola Italiana Ski Laghi both via the village site as well as our hotel’s recommendation. They were more flexible in that they offered anywhere between four to six days’ length of classes in groups of either four or eight. Since I’m not made of money, contrary to what you might think 🙃, I opted for the larger group course for four days. The kids would need a break after so many long days on the slopes, anyway.

Now I’ve booked ski schools everywhere from the far corners of France to deep glacier valleys in Austria, but when two kids together for four days of three hour classes comes in at under 400 euros, I felt that such a cost was very reasonable. Compared to what a ski course in Liechtenstein would’ve cost for the same duration (960 CHF 🥲), I felt good about the booking.

You know that part about flying by the seat of your pants with most aspects of being in Italy? Preparing for the ski school’s first day was kind of like that. They sent out a meeting place and time email ahead of time and stated in the message that it was important we make contact with the school the day prior in order to obtain some details about the first day. When I spoke with them, they said they could pick us up and that they’d deliver the ski vests to the hotel with all details needed. Once we got to the hotel past 7PM and the vests weren’t there with no chance to call the school back, we started to get a little worried.

With a combination of calling the school back a few times the first morning, waking the kids up very early just in case, and asking the front desk how it usually works, we ended up getting the story. A ski school van ended up picking us up and running us to the meeting point. Meeting point was pretty chaotic but somehow the Italians made sense of it and everything worked like clockwork the first day on the slopes and each subsequent morning. It allowed my spouse and I maximum time to run away as fast as possible and enjoy valuable husband and wife time on the snow.

Ski school Laghi’s instructors are fantastic, though. Matteo was the tall cool Italian that was assigned to our kids and the improvement on their control and parallel turns I saw from their first weekend this year at Hintertux was impressive. They looked ready to tackle anything and my 8-year old was even asked if he wanted to join another group to tackle a black run. I was hugely impressed. During each 3-hour daily period they also ran all over the Campiglio ski area (thanks to a small GPS enabled watch my daughter wore). The Italian school may not be quite as formally organized as their Swiss, Austrian, French, and German counterparts, but the quality of instruction really was great. Matteo was a real professional and the kids really hated leaving him. The biggest criticism I had of the school was the pickup process: it was chaotic. We didn’t realize or weren’t told that, if there’s too many kids, the van essentially packs them in like sardines and the parents figure out their own way.

It’s one of those things that, if you’re not ready for it, can shock you a bit and cause a bit of worry as a Dad or Mom.

Moving away from ski school at this point and turning to the slopes, their cost, etc. brings me to a few details I wouldn’t want anyone to miss out on.

The tickets for the slopes are some of the more expensive ones I’ve come across in Europe. I was thanking every deity imaginable when my son got a free lift ticket because of his birthday; however, just for my daughter and I alone for 4-days was 500 Euros. I had previously read (and subsequently forgotten) that it’s a bit cheaper to buy online ahead of time, and it might have made more sense to buy through the ski school as well, but I was a little floored when I was given the total that didn’t even include my spouse’s ticket. Not doing proper research for the win! Don’t be like me! This is why you come here!

We were very fortunate in that we had both a cloudy and a bluebird powder day to have a lot of fun in, as well as beautiful groomer days…so we experienced the full breadth of the slopes and the quality in which they stood.

On non-powder days, groomed slope quality was still surprisingly good even though the temps had been a little mild for the season. The lower reaches going into the village and surrounding area were really ski’d out by 1400, but I still found the groomed runs in the lower reaches to be quite nice all things considered. On top of that, there are at least a half dozen long runs that take you from around 2k meters straight into the village and wider hotel areas of Campiglio. I thought this was really really cool considering the fact that, when I see it, there is usually just a single run going all the way back down into town from the upper altitudes at other slope regions.

There are also some long very not-snowboarder-friendly flat areas that one needs to look ahead for when visiting. There is nothing sadder for a snowboarder (yes you skiers have it easier) than bottoming out on a flat stretch and having to un-snap and scootch yourself along a trail. It’s depressing.

Poking more fun at the chaos that is Italian 🇮🇹society (I’ve been to Sicily I can judge 😅), more often than not, the population seemed to get out on the slopes pretty late in the morning and that included on a beautiful bluebird powder day. I was really shocked when I had no issues grabbing only the second gondola car up to Grosté (around 2300m). That is where you want to go on powder days especially if you love going off-piste like my kids apparently do.

They also don’t understand what forming up a line is so just box them out at every opportunity.

A couple of side notes at this point…naturally when one goes off-piste, there are a few terrain hazards out there you have to be a bit more cautious of. Some of these include enormous rocks…which is what found my board on our first powder day. What looked like a two inch chunk of my board got ripped out by a hidden rock as I ended my best powder run…luckily I found Alta Quota and they repaired everything in an hour saving me both lift ticket money and even moreso valuable time on a beautiful new fallen snow day.

The hotel we called home for seven days was Residence Hotel Ambiez which was beautifully situated directly next to two major lifts (Grosté and Fortini). I’ll just say it: the hotel was weird. The layout was basically a labyrinth, the ski room reminded me of an armory from 1965, and housekeeping never really showed up for 7-days. The positive parts: location was great, restaurant dinners were fantastic, and it was right next to a pretty solid Après Ski nightly party.

Food on the mountain was very hit or miss…which I was shocked at. In the higher altitude huts, we found some fantastic 7 euro parma ham paninis and unbelievable cioccolata calda…but at another hut, I paid 13 euros for what was basically gross looking Hot Dogs. I was really confused on the mountain’s culinary offerings. Additionally, on a weekend night, it seems that even pizza joints in town just give up when they get booked up. Two places we went to either locked their doors to new customers (I got around that) or straight up said it’s not possible to order pizzas to go. This is where my American brain just doesn’t quite compute what I’m experiencing.

You guys like money, right…?

My final bit is on the village itself of Campiglio. If you don’t wear fur coats, hats, and potentially not wearing moon boots, you’ll probably feel a little out of place, here. It is definitely an affluent and wealthy area to which I felt very strong, “Get out of here poor guy” vibes. Getting a table for dinner without a reservation is basically impossible so you may want to ensure you have a hotel with a kitchen. The infrastructure for pedestrians (sidewalks) suck and you’re basically walking in the street next to Bentleys and Aston Martins most of the time. My daughter almost shook hands with an SUV because she thinks cross-walk rules are the same in Italy as they are in Germany…which could not be further from the truth.

Parking is a complete nightmare in the entire area so I would not recommend staying anywhere that you have to drive in from. The parking lots are small and the only other areas are essentially side-of-the-road spaces. Based off of what I’ve observed in Italian driving behavior, don’t expect to keep your side view mirrors if you do this.

To summarize (if you skipped to this paragraph you cheated), the actual ski area is completely fantastic. Even on groomer days, we all had a lot of fun. There was a lot of terrain being offered and we took full advantage of everything we could. The city itself is expensive as are the lift tickets. The fact that it is so far of a drive from our home also is a strike against it that I have to personally keep in mind. I’m glad we went, but I don’t think we’ll re-visit the Dolomites simply due to the distance when we have Austrian and Swiss Alps so much closer.

I’m willing to drive distances to slopes, but the cost and chaos of Campiglio wasn’t quite worth it to me. if I’m driving 7 hours, I’ll probably limit that to France or maybe Slovenia, one day.

Bis zum näschtes mal!

the snowboard dad in europe