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Skiing around the world
Join Jimmy in Verbier, Alta, Chamonix and many of the world's most famous ski resorts, and continue with him to find out about his secret powder stashes in various lesser-known ski areas.
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This story began as far back as June 2000, when my cousin, Gina Schaar, decided to quit her high-paying position as a Washington, D.C. lawyer, and become part of a voluntary, non-profit, American-sponsored program to help the government of Albania democratize its judicial system.
Gina’s e-mails to her friends and family were brimming with interesting and amazing facts and anecdotes.
Gina also described a country full of beautiful scenery and lovely mountain ranges. As a skier, I was fascinated by the possibility of visiting Albania to practice my favorite pastime. Albania, however, was different from the other poor countries in which I had skied. Even the likes of Bolivia, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, India and Romania were the proud benefactors of some rudimentary form of ski lifts—not Albania. It had no time for such excesses under Hoxha’s rule, and this land, 70 percent of whose surface is covered by mountains, has not a single ski lift. My interest was piqued even more.
Gina began to investigate for me, but information did not come easily. Skiers were a little hard to come by, but Gina persevered. She met Helmut Obermoser, a transplanted Austrian who had been working in Albania for four years and knew the mountains of the country very well, at least in summer. She also found a couple of locals, Maqo and Mandi, two among very few Albanian ski enthusiasts.
She gathered information. Albania has many areas with snow-covered mountains. In the north, along the border with Serbia and Montenegro, are the spectacular Dinaric or Albanian Alps, a range of dramatic, cliff-laden, limestone peaks. Mt. Jezerca, at 2693 meters, is the highest mountain in this range. To the east, along the Macedonian border, lies the Korabi Range and Albania’s highest peak, Mt. Korabi (2751 m); and in the south, near Korca, are the Morava Mountains. The latter region had various places where one could ski, according to her local contacts.
This was enough information to set me into motion. Dutch adventurer Ronald Naar joined me, and we arrived in Albania’s capital, Tirana, in January.
To think that there are no “ski resorts” in Albania is wrong, but the Albanian ski locations were not what we in the West think of today as a ski resort. Rather, they are more like what existed in the Alps about 80 years ago—a village in the mountains where one can go skiing. After all, this is the way skiing began. We were going back to the roots—we just didn’t know quite how far back we were...
For those who have not yet solved the mystery, Minna and I were visiting Andorra, a tiny land of 464 square kilometers (about half the size of New York City) and 70,000 inhabitants, nestled into a little corner of the Pyrenees between Spain and France. Mountains cover every square centimeter of this minuscule princedom, and 60 of those peaks are over 2500 meters high.
According to legend, the country was founded by Charlemagne in the year 784, and since then, Andorrans have enjoyed living in peace and harmony, avoiding war for over 1200 years. Nowadays, Andorra is a modern and wealthy country, although the Andorrans did not confer the right to vote to women until 1970 and first created a constitution in 1993. (Draw your own conclusion on the relationship between 1200 years of peace and the late advent of women’s suffrage.)
For many years, tobacco was the main product of the country, and it was primarily smuggled out of Andorra and sold in France. Smuggling is actually legal here. Later, because of Andorra’s tax-free status, shopping gradually became the national sport, national flower and national anthem. Tourists began to flock here from all over Europe each year to partake in spree shopping for liquor, cigarettes, perfumes, optics, electronics and even cars. All the while, in the past few years, skiing has sneaked past shopping as the number one industry in Andorra, and that says a lot!
Snowsports can be enjoyed here from November into late April, and nowadays, Andorra attracts about nine million tourists annually, with many of those visitors coming for the skiing. Skiers can stay in the capital, Andorra la Vella, or in one of the small mountain villages, as everyplace is close to everyplace else...
I first discovered the joys and trials of Argentine skiing on an extended visit in 1985. An experience in the village of Rio Turbio characterized skiing on this continent at that time. Today, the ski area, situated a few kilometers from Rio Turbio, is called Valdelén, and it is still relatively obscure, even by South American standards. My short visit at this tiny ski area so long ago taught me that one does not need a lot of lifts or record-breaking vertical to enjoy a good day of skiing. In a way, that day was a kind of inspiration for this book, for it began a long sojourn in search of remote and little-known ski centers.
To begin with, making my way to Rio Turbio was not the easiest task I have ever undertaken. I had heard from vaguely reliable sources that there did exist a ski center in Rio Turbio, and I located the village on the map. It lies far into the southernmost regions of Patagonia, not far from the Straits of Magellan. This is about as remote as one can get in the ski world, short of a visit to Antarctica.
I flew to Punta Arenas, Chile, a somewhat redundant flight, since it took me 250 kilometers further south than my destination, but it was an easier connection than any that went through Argentina. From there, I backtracked 4 hours north by bus to Puerto Natales, a beautiful Chilean village of 18,000 inhabitants situated in the midst of the Patagonian fjord country.
The ski center is located exactly on the border between Chile and Argentina, officially in Argentina, 20 kilometers from Puerto Natales. Being so close to my destination, I decided to get a little information before embarking on the last leg of my journey. That was the South American version of...
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