| Reviews: 37 |
| Review Mod |
| Kirkcudbrightshire |
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  4 of 5 03/09/2004 @ 17:55 |
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| Price Paid |
| N/A |
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| Booked Trip Through |
| Summer road trip. |
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| Times Visited |
| Just Once |
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| Review Detail |
Val Senales is in the German speaking Sud-Tirol in Northern Italy.
Waking up early on a cold,clear late July morning in Solden high in the Oetz valley i looked out of the tent to see the mountains covered in a fresh dusting of snow.
We had breakfast and got into the car and drove up past Obergurgl and to the Toll road over the Timmelsjoch Hochalpenstrasse. The summit of this road is the border between Austria and the Italian Sud Tirol and is at a height of 2509m.The return ticket cost €14 and the pass is only open from May to October and is one of the steepest and most spectacular mountain passes i have been over in the Alps.
The journey from Solden to Val Senales took longer than anticipated as we were held up getting through the town of Meran and even at 8.30 in the morning the temp was hitting 25c.
Once clear of the traffic in Meran we left the main road towards the Stelvio Pass at Naturno from where it is a fairly steep drive up past a stunning blue lake to Kurzras.
Kurzras consists of a few hotels with tennis courts and a Horse riding centre,a huge car park and a cable car station witha ticket office.
The lift times for Summer Skiing/Boarding were from 07.30 until 13.00 but the main gondola was open longer.
The lift tickets cost €25 plus €5 deposit for the "hands free" card.
Its then a 6 min ride to the top of the gondola at 3212m where the highest hotel in the Alps (Hotel Grawand) is situated on a high cliff giving great views of the valley below.
It was a pretty cold morning when we strapped in (-2c) but there was a light covering of snow from last night and now the sun was shining so we were all set for a good few hours riding.
There are 22 miles of groomed pistes up here as well as 12 miles of cross country ski tracks.
On our visit there were two chairlifts and a long drag lift in operation. The place was quite busy with junior Italian ski teams at Summer training camps practicing on the Grawand Slalom pistes but there was still plenty of room for everybody.
The drag lift was lower down and the track was pretty hard and icy where the overnight snow had been blown away. This lift served a pretty flat blue run which we only went down the one time.
We then had a good few runs from the Grawand chair before heading down the red Gletschersee slopes to the other chair which was in operation.It was very quiet down here and we hardly seen another person in the next hour except for the old guy at the bottom of the chair who was busy moving snow around to improve the area where you catch the chair.The snow in this area was in good condition and made a nice squeaky noise underfoot much like you would expect to find on a cold Jan morning high above chamonix but not in Italy in the middle of Summer!!
The runs down to this chair were fairly long and of a steeper pitch which allowed us to get some speed up as we carved our way back to the snow filled track which led back to the lift.
This two man chair made its way back up beside a cliff face with a few nice snow filled couloirs which in Winter would provide some fine sport.
The exit from this chair was very steep but as the snow was soft it was easy to keep control of the board as you got off but it could be a different story in hard,icy conditions.
We had a few runs down here finding a couple of small kickers at the side as we went down and before we knew it the time was nearing 1pm.
There is a small park here with a few rails and kickers but there were only a few people using it- although they looked quite good.
At the top station there is a "snow gallery" telling the story of Otzi the man from the ice who was discovered in the glacier a few years back.
We then took the gondola back down to Kurzras and went back to the car to get the shorts on before heading back down the valley towards Naturno. On the way down we stopped at a small restaurant for a late lunch in the warm afternoon sunshine before heading back through Meran and up over the spectacular Timmelsjoch pass to Austria.
Got back to Solden by 7pm and then it was down the pub!
This was an enjoyable day out and i would recommend anyone to have a day at Val Senales if they happen to be in that part of the world in the Summer.
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| Strengths |
High altitude Summer area.
Good lifts.
Quiet (on our visit).
Fresh Summer snow. |
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| Weaknesses |
| Cant think of anything! |
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| Similar Resorts Visited |
| Think that was number 154 (not inc Tamworth) |
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