Skiing & Snowboarding, Lifts & Terrain
We love it when a plan comes together. Powderhounds often peruse ski trail maps in the first instance when deciding on where to ski around the world. Whilst some trail maps are a fantasy, often they provide enough key information to give us the nudge to go & visit. Lauchernalp is one such place. To give an insight, what we saw on the trail map was: a huge skiable vertical (1,700m), high elevation (top of 3,111m), potentially wide off-piste alpine between Stafel at 2,100m & the Hockenhorngrat 1,000m vertical above it, quality ski lifts (newish gondola, new six-seater chair), small enough to be quiet but big enough to have all the services & facilities plus a long valley run into an isolated valley with small villages accessible by public transport. To our great delight all this was true. One gets quite chuffed when instincts are correct & skiing Lauchernalp, even in near zero viz, was an absolute joy. Face shots on the piste after lunch is always a good indication of a wonderful ski hill for Powderhounds!
See the Lauchernalp ski trail map.
Skiing Highlights
By no means a secret to the Swiss locals living in Bern, Lauchernalp-Lötschental is relatively unknown to most other skiers & snowboarders. And scoring freshies here is all but guaranteed when a storm is raging. It is perhaps a different proposition on a sunny weekend day! Here are the highlights of Lauchernalp to tick off when you visit.
- Do a reconnaissance of Lauchernalp on a sunny midweek day taking your time to get to know the resort and soaking in all the jaw-dropping views.
- Having done a reconnaissance, DURING the next blizzard, get there early for first lifts (the chairs spin from 8.30am but be in line earlier) and cut lonely powder lap after powder lap from Hockenhorngrat to Stafal.
- When the sun comes out after a storm, if conditions allow (i.e. are safe enough), explore the backcountry terrain toward the Lötschenpass and all the way down to the valley toward Kippel & Ferdun. Take a bus back to the cable car base at Wiler.
- It may seem lame to some but do the valley trail from Lauchernalp down to Wiler at least once. Whilst sections of the trail are flat and should be avoided by snowboarders, there are loads of steep sections to ski between the hairpin bends that are in classic Swiss Alps forested, rural settings. And there is something undeniably pleasant about cruising through this landscape on ski. The walk from the end of the trail back through the village to the cable car is memorable. Check out a few of the cow barns along the way.
- Challenge yourself to ski the 1,150m vertical on piste without stopping from Hockenhorngrat to the main base facilities at Lauchernalp. We do love a thigh-melting exercise!
Ski Lifts
We love resorts that are simple to understand and explain. Lauchernalp is one of them. Effectively a 'string' of four major ski lifts from valley to peak, it makes for easy navigation. But whilst it is easy to explain the set up, it is not easy to explain the type of lifts as one goes up the mountain. The base cable car with a 100-person capacity from Wiler (1,419m) to Lauchernalp (1,968m) makes perfect sense, given it was installed in the mid-90s. The next short section from Lauchernalp up to Stafal (2,100m) has a modern 6-seater chair which despite its tiny vertical, makes complete sense to get novices, beginners & intermediates up and out of the mid-mountain base. The third section makes no sense. A 3-seater chair from the late '80s runs from Stafal up 620m vertical to Gandegg (2,720m). Sounds reasonable until you see what the next lift is - a modern 15-person gondola. What the? Shouldn't that be the third lift? Seems a little over-capitalised! Who knows? It is nice to travel from Gandegg to the highest lifted point at Hockenhorngrat (3,111m) in comfort, but why the 3-seater chair below Grandegg hasn't been replaced is beyond us. Also at Gandegg is the top station of a largely redundant surface tow extending up from Marwig (2,400m) (which was not running during our visit). The only other lift is a novice tow at Stafal. Simples!
Good to know is that the cable car from Wiler up to the main ski area starts at 7.15am.
Lift Pass
As with many ski resorts in Switzerland, there are two types of lift pass price. One is the 'get what you are given' high priced Lift pass at the cash desk/ticket window. The other is the cheaper pre-purchased online lift pass. Lauchernalp has adopted this system which dynamically prices lift passes based on weather, time of year, demand etc. The high price paid at the cash desk is the upper limit of a ticket. At Lauchernalp, pre-purchasing a day pass online can save up to 16CHF for an adult. Get them from here.
Snowboarding at Lauchernalp
Lauchernalp is totally snowboard friendly EXCEPT for the valley trail. Long flat sections will see most boarders walking, particularly if the snow is slow. Avoid it and go off-piste down to the valley or download on the cable car.
More information on Skiing & Snowboarding Lauchernalp ski resort is coming soon. In the meantime look at the photos above that were taken on our visit to the resort during a seriously cold, seriously fun blizzard. We will go back one day & ski it in the sun.
