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Summer Ski holidays
If you’ve ever had to grin and bear a slush day in a ski resort, you’ll have a hard time imagining a place that combines St Tropez style sun with Antarctic levels of snow. Heading high to the glaciers, however, you’ll find a tenacious layer of the white stuff nearly all year round – and rays aplenty for working on your best goggle tan yet...
A dry slope or indoor ski centre just doesn’t come close to the real McCoy, and the pro’s collectively take to the glaciers in the summer to squeeze in a few more months of proper practice.
The pistes up here are usually quiet as a whisper, so there’s nothing to distract you from brushing up on your technique before the start of the season. Plus, almost all resorts will still have open ski schools and often hold specialist training camps for things like free-styling and racing to lend a professional hand.
But you don’t just come to the mountains in the summer to schuss and sleep – lifts tend to open early and stay running until lunchtime, leaving all afternoon for exploring at whichever pace you choose: swapping the ski boots for the walking variety, hurtling down the mountains on a heavy-duty mountain bike or putting your feet up for an afternoon of sun and cider soaked laziness. Resorts like Zell am See and Tignes, even have lakes for some water-based activities.
European summer ski resorts
France has never been known to do winter sports by halves and its high-altitude, purpose-built glacial ski resorts keep on buzzing even when it’s all green and grassy further down. The big French resorts pull out all stops in the summer, as we all know and love them for in the winter, making holidays as event, activity and fun filled as possible.
Summer ski resorts in France: Tignes, Les 2 Alpes
While some French and Italian resorts are less charm and more concrete, Switzerland’s villages date back centuries, with ancient Alpine farmhouses in the thousands. If that wasn’t enough, sights of the iconic Matterhorn and other 4000m+ peaks are a landscape to rival anywhere else in the world. The out of season skiing terrain is world class: you’ll find top skiers and snowboarders from all over the globe training here in Zermatt in the summertime.
Forget the notion that Austria’s all lower peaks –with 8 operating glaciers, you certainly have your pick of towering titans here. There’s none steeper than the Hintertux in the whole of the Alps, where you can swap salopettes for shorts and jump into alpine lakes for an afternoon splash-about. The resorts are cheery and even more achingly traditional –if that were possible- when the snow clears, with rolling hills and flowery meadows straight out of the Sound of Music.
Summer ski resorts in Austria: Hintertux (Mayrhofen), Zell am See, Kaprun, Neustift
Italy isn’t the first country you think of when it comes to snow sure glacier skiing so it may come as a surprise that it’s home to the largest summer skiing area in Europe splayed out just above Cervinia... With slopes closing just in time for those long lunches that Italy does best, summer skiing here has the golden mean of adrenaline-fuelled mountain action and sun soaked laziness.
Summer ski resorts in Italy: Cervinia
Summer Skiing in North America
Summer camps rule the roost here – with either lifts closed to the average Joe until lunchtime or areas split between public and private skiing. That’s just a reflection of the world-class pistes and parks. With North America’s awesome list of other things to do, you won’t be left high and dry when the snow isn’t accessible (think bear watching, horseback riding cowboy-style and some seriously impressive MTB).
Summer ski resorts in North America: Whistler
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