Evolène, Switzerland

Rob Davies from UNITED KINGDOM writes:

A small resort in the Val d'Herens, 30 minutes by bus from Sion. It does not see many overseas visitors but it's not a bad place to spend a day exploring if you get tired of the busy slopes of nearby Nendaz 4/valleys and fancy something a bit more rustic.

Like many smaller Swiss resorts, the lift system is old and very basic. Access from the valley station is via a pretty ancient and very slow 2 seat chair. Up on the hill things are not much better with just a handful of drag lifts.

To its credit, these few lifts do provide access to a surprisingly large area with quite a bit of off-piste potential between the long upper traverse run and the bottom of the drags. Most of these off-piste areas are very obvious and as a result they get tracked out quite quickly after fresh snow. The last places to suffer are at the far sides of the resort.

Although there is a lot of vertical range at Evolène, in practice nobody skies back to the valley until the end of the day because this is mostly a tedious benched track - there is not often enough snow at this altitude to make much of the more direct lines that cut out all the corners so the effective vertical range is about half of the actual. There is a nice little ancient Inn near the car-park at the bottom amongst a tiny hamlet of ramshackle cottages and barns whereas the cafe on the slopes is pretty basic and merely functional.

Excellent views over Valais, the Bernese Oberland and towards the Dent Blanche and a good resort from which to explore the tops on touring skis.

Accommodation in Evolène village itself is rather a long way from the bottom of the ski area and even in peak season there are very few ski buses joining the village with the resort.

2010-03-06

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