Nordic, Telemark and Alpine skiing vacations in Norway and

the European Alps: cont ...

Nordic touring in the Jotunheim

Nordic hut-to-hut touring – our 'Peaks,
Passes & Glaciers' tour in the

Jotunheim mountains, Norway.

Hut-to-hut touring in Norway and Sweden

Norway and Sweden Norway is the spiritual home of free-heel skiing and offers a wonderful and unique touring experience.

Norwegian 'huts' are actually remote mountain lodges similar to staffed lodges in parts of the Rockies; they offer warm, dry and very comfortable accommodation, including a shop (waxes and ski paraphernalia, chocolates and 'goodies', beer and wine, maps and first aid items, etc.), showers and drying rooms and with full-board arrangements. The staff are always very hospitable and the network of 'huts' covers most of the country.

A part of this network includes 'self-service huts'; these are lodges that have everything there for you: beds and bedding, gas cookers and all cooking implements, wood for heating and snow melting, basic but very adequate food supplies – in fact everything you need to enjoy the accommodation, its location and your tour without the need to carry very much at all! Depending on the area there is a mix of lodges so you might be alternating between 'staffed' and 'self-service' huts or any other mix of huts permutation. Have a look at our ‘DNT’ page for more information and images.

The spacing between huts is typically something in the order of 12 to 25 kms; this is ideal for touring in undulating hill and plateau terrain and also allows time for skiing peaks as well, if time, inclination and weather so dictate.

Nordic touring in the Jotunheim

Village-to-village touring on the Grand Traverse of the Jura.
Photos: Julia Tregaskis.

Occasional two or three night stops also give the opportunity to do day tours from a base e.g. our Finse Circular, Hardanger Icecap Explorer and Jotunheim: North-West Passage tours. Our other tours include the Rondane Explorer tour (a perfect ‘intro level’ hut-to-hut tour) and four point-to-point traverses; the Jotunheim: Pines to Peaks, the Jotunheim: North-West Passage, the Skarvheimen Traverse and the Hardanger to Telemark Traverse. The first and second of these four tours, and also the third and fourth, can be combined into fantastic two week expeditions. We are also offering a tour with husky dog support, following 'The King’s Trail’ through the mountains surrounding Sweden’s highest peak, Kebnekaise, well North of the Arctic Circle.

Depending on the touring venue, you can simply take the train from Oslo Gardermoen Airport, get off at your destination, ski tour for a week, get back on the train to the airport and fly home! What could be easier? All these tours are best done on Nordic mountain touring gear i.e. Nordic cambered skis with very little side-cut, stout leather or soft plastic boots and using waxes, with 'skins' only for longer, steeper climbs.

What some of our North American visitors have said about us ...

"First many, many thanks for the adventurous ski trip in Norway, Yes it was challenging in the end due to the icy conditions , but it was SPECTACULAR!!! and exactly what I was looking for. Stefan was an excellent leader, and the group was just the best you can choose for this type of activity.

I hope to be able to do the Jutenheim tour next year ..."

E.R., Massachusetts, March 2004

"To think I had to come all the way over here (French Alps) for some decent Telemark instruction!"

T.R., Los Angeles, Jan. 2004

"The snow's better here (Greece – Telemark skiing) than Whistler!"

P.R., Vancouver, Feb. 2004

As we broke out above a cloud-sea at Tignes and the view of the French Alps appeared: "Holey moley!!!"

D.S., Philadelphia, Dec. 2008

Nordic weeks and weekends in the Alps

How about a week of Nordic skiing followed by a week of Alpine or Telemark? If you are coming this far …? With our new Nordic weeks and long weekends in the Alps this is easy and convenient.

If you are new to vacations in the snow you try our Chamonix: Snowshoe and Ski week as a superb chance to sample these activities. For those wishing to develop cross-country skiing skills we can offer the Dolomites Track Explorer which is based in the Italian Val Fiume visiting the sublimely beautiful Nordic areas of the Dolomite Alps, overlooked by high rocky spires and snowy peaks and skiing amongst enchanting forests and Alpine meadows; this also gives the opportunity to do one of the great cross-country races, the Marcialonga, at the end of the week. The third option is the classic Grand Traverse of the Jura, a multi-day village-to-village tour with light rucksacks (your bags go by minibus!) along this range of mountains just north of Geneva; awesome convenience, perfect trails, picturesque villages and panorama that can include Lake Geneva and a wide span of the Alps.

This winter we have introduced a ‘Jura Highlights’ long weekend, visiting the best bits of the Grand Traverse of the Jura all in a convenient three days of skiing. The ‘Haute Savoie Nordic Ski Safari’ is a great way to visit a number of excellent but out-of-the-way Nordic centres, all within a snowball’s throw of Geneva airport!

Off-piste Telemarking at Le Tou

Off-piste Telemarking at Le Tour near

Chamonix; the Grand Montets ski area

in the background with 6,600 ft of

vertical and many, many days of steep

and deep potential!

Telemark and Alpine touring in the Alps

Traditionally the environment for those with AT gear, more and more folk are doing classic 'Alpine' traverses, high-level routes and circuits on freeheel equipment. For this everybody uses wide, shaped tele skis, plastic boots and skins for climbing. Skiers on AT gear are, of course, very welcome and we have found that mixed groups of skiers on AT and Tele gear ski well together – and are also makes for plenty of comparison and lively discussion over a beer!

A bit like in Norway, there is a very comprehensive 'hut' system; the quality of huts varies from country to country but generalisations would be Italian huts for food, Austrian huts for overall comfort, almost luxury, in remote, high altitude locations, and French huts for general 'flair'.

Lightweight Telemark touring is possible amongst some stunning terrain which is of easy access – the big international airports like Geneva, Zurich, Turin and Munich are all a snow-ball's throw from the mountains! The touring season extends well in to May, 2000 m descents are not unusual and snow conditions can be worth dying for! We offer a week at Kühtai (Austria), a very well-positioned, high altitude centre for day touring and a number of 3000 m peaks.

On-piste and off-piste with the big vertical of world-class Alpine resorts

Most of our Telemark and Alpine skiing weeks are at resorts that have been carefully chosen for their excellent snow record (most resorts have extensive snow-making facilities and/or a glacier!), a good network of trails offering plenty for all ability levels and also a 'certain something' extra ...

Valley Blanche skiing

One flight, one taxi, one tram ride and you can be here!

A perfect day in the Vallee Blanche.

La Thuile (Italy) for no lift lines, untracked off-piste and unrivalled hospitality; Les Contamines (France) tucked away below the western end of the Mt Blanc range, quiet and little-skied and just a ‘stones throw’ from Geneva airport – a well-hidden on- and off-piste paradise. Les Contamines proved to be a great ‘hit’ last year combining ease of access, charm, no lift queues and a stunning setting! New on offer this season is Chamonix, the world-reknown resort at the foot of Mt Blanc with some of the biggest off-piste in the Alps and just over an hour from the airport at Geneva.

Hintertux (Austria) for early season reliability due to high altitude and a large and probably the best glacier for ski interest in Europe.

Kühtai (Austria) a less well-known ski area with high altitude skiing, not too busy and plenty of variety and access to off-piste; Gressoney (Italy), linked to Champoluc and Alagna, for high altitude reliability and huge lift accessed off-piste potential; Tignes (France) for the unrivalled quality of terrain of the vast ‘Espace Killy’, from tree skiing at Les Brevieres at 1600 m to the eternal snows of the Grand Motte glacier at 3400 m – plus the delights of French food and wine!

We have some mouth-watering video footage on YouTube for the following venues (click to view)
as a sampler of skiing in the Alps with The Telemark Ski Company:

Obergurgl

Cervinia

La Thuile

Fiescheralp

The Alps: dramatic scenery, hugenchoice, vast ski

areas and off-piste runs like this!

New two seasons ago was Lenzerheide (Switzerland) – high, picturesque, quiet and with superb on-piste options and remarkably easy access to virtually boundless off-piste and tours. It proved to be a great success – have a look at this footage on YouTube!

New last season is Zinal (Switzerland) hidden up a side valley in the Valais Alps and directly beneath some 4000 m peaks. Quiet and unspoilt with five different ski areas to explore and is a very underrated off-piste and freeride venue – don’t tell anyone!

Last but definitely not the least, a week at Andermatt (Switzerland), a quiet and relatively undeveloped Swiss mountain town with a growing reputation as a ‘world venue’ for easy access off-piste and freeride skiing, rivalling La Grave and Alagna as the place to ski steeps and deeps.

Telemark and Alpine skiing in the wonderful, dramatic environment of the Alps

Your opportunity to have a real vacation and a break from your familiar ski venues in Colorado, New England, BC or wherever, with the focus on free-heel skiing. We also offer the leadership and guidance from those who know the areas and will ensure you have the best possible time in a new skiing environment. Add in the various cultural and historical associations of the different parts of the Alps – or Scandinavia – and you have a recipe for a unique skiing experience. Or stay on for a week and do Venice and Rome, Paris and London ... or find a quiet Mediterranean fishing village to pamper yourself and fully relax!

How you can join our packages and arrangements

Most of our trips will have a common meeting up time and place at the start of the trip e.g. an hotel in Oslo on the evening of a specific date, or our arrangements will start from a location e.g. Oslo, with a train ride at a certain time to, say, the start point of a tour. In the Alps the meeting place is almost always at a designated hotel in the chosen resort. UK clients simply find their own flights to join our trips, meeting as above, as specified in the specific Trip Details. In other words it does not matter where in the world anybody is flying from – everybody simply has to arrange their travel to be there at an agreed time and place! At the end of a trip, the reverse happens. If you wish to travel on to extend your vacation, or maybe a take trip with us is at the end of a longer vacation, then again, no problem.

How you can pay!

• Credit or debit card (secure on-line payments)

• Bank transfer

• PayPal

• Internet banking

For full details refer to our Booking page.

Questions, etc. please e-mail ...

You will be making a big investment of money and time in coming across 'the Pond' and you will want to be absolutely sure that what you end up doing with us on snow is what you expect when you book – though we hope it will be even better! So please, click on with your mouse, hit your keyboard and ask us about anything to do with a prospective trip with us: travel arrangements, ability levels, expected snowpack ... anything!

We're looking forward to seeing you over here!