In 25 years of skiing, this Olympic region delivered my best ever trip

The French Alps are hit with two metres of snow over two days on the week I visit Italy’s Dolomites ski region. A neighbour would later tell me he skied waist-deep powder snow in French resort Courchevel.

But I’m not envious, not even a bit.

I see, too, that the Austrian Alps – which are barely a hundred kilometres north of the Dolomites – receive almost as much snow.

Italy’s Dolomite Mountains are located in a snow shadow for these storm systems that approach from the north. For snow, they rely on storms coming from the opposite direction – the south. And there aren’t any – not during the week I visit, at least.

If you’ve been watching the 2026 Winter Olympics – which showcase the Dolomites across several events – you may have noticed how little snow covers the peaks here. That’s not to say the Dolomites don’t receive a lot of snow; like every ski region, this varies from season to season.

But what’s noteworthy is that these mountains don’t even have to offer fresh snow as a reason to visit. In 25 years of global ski travel, I doubt I’ve had a better ski trip. Perhaps, in these climate-changed times, the Dolomites offer us all hope for the future of the ski holiday.

Skiing in Italy’s Dolomites is as much about eating – and drinking – as it is about the sport itself. This is one of the world’s premier ski gourmet regions, home to more Michelin-starred restaurants than any other European ski region. It’s no coincidence, therefore, that the concept of the gourmet ski safari originated here.

Conceived by local chef Norbert Niederkofler, who ran what was one of Europe’s most prestigious three Michelin-starred restaurants, St Hubertus, until its closure, his idea was to combine skiing with Michelin-starred cuisine, where each component – eating and skiing – is as important as the other.

I’m on a seven-day gourmet ski safari which will take me across the 1200 kilometres of interconnected ski slopes that constitute the Dolomites ski region. I’ll ski to a new hotel every day. While that might be logistically challenging for my guide, Filippo Turrin, and his team of drivers, all I know is that my bags magically appear in a new hotel, in an entirely new valley, at the end of each day.

Mostly, I’ll sleep within historic – and romantic – Italian ski villages, though on some occasions I’ll be entirely isolated in (mostly) family-owned rifugi (huts) at the top of mountains reachable only on skis. If you don’t mind repeatedly packing and unpacking, this will be the most interesting ski trip you ever take.

On our first morning – departing south-west from 2026 Winter Olympics co-host city Cortina d’Ampezzo, a sleek ski village once nicknamed “Salotto dei Famosi” (the celebrities’ living room) for its visiting roster of ’50s and ’60s movie stars like Audrey Hepburn and Brigitte Bardot – Turrin announces a coffee break shortly after we hit the slopes.

He leads us to a mountain hut with timber deck chairs set outside in the sun, draped in soft lamb wool, and orders calimeros – a rich, hot cocktail invented here, made with warm, eggnog-like zabaglione liqueur, and a dash of rum, topped with espresso and whipped cream. “This,” he says, motioning to my drink, the view and my seat in the sunshine, “is how you ski in the Dolomites.”

To get here, we’ve taken a cable car up a fairy tale valley and skied down slopes beneath sheer cliff faces whose drastic vertical walls make me think of Yosemite National Park’s El Capitan. We were towed behind two Clydesdale horses on a rope to reach this calimero pit stop, where we’re encircled now by pale, jagged limestone mountains. The ancient underwater reefs which existed here long ago became startling spires and harsh steep cliff faces, notably paler in colour than the rest of the European Alps.

Though it’s barely snowed in six weeks, the snow is oddly spectacular, considering it’s predominantly man-made. European skiers tend to favour the middle of each run, so when I ride on either side of the run, I do so through centimetres of fresh, fine snow pushed aside by them, which feels like skiing on castor sugar. And while skiing’s hardly the only reason to visit the Dolomites, the diversity of its slopes is impressive: from the plunging black runs of my early morning, to gentle slopes which can at times run on for over 10 kilometres.

I fall for the ski safari concept immediately: it feels like we’re always going somewhere. Ski holidays can feel monotonous: the same lifts up, just to ski back down again… and then repeat. In the Dolomites, I won’t do the same run twice, in seven days.

We’re travelling in a south-west direction, through a series of high mountain passes which link sprawling glacial valleys, each with their own preserved micro-cultures. Imagine if you could ski across in Vail the US or Whistler in Canada and find locals speaking a different language, observing different customs, eating different foods?

I begin in Cortina, where my accommodation, Hotel Ancora, is old-world Italian glamour at its zenith. My suite, with its wrap-around terrace and Italian marble finishes, opens right up to the sheer mountains. But as we ski slowly westward, everything changes.

German is favoured in many parts of this section of the Dolomites (South Tyrol), which was once part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. We ski through villages which look entirely Austrian. But in the heart of these Dolomite mountains, 30,000 locals still speak Ladin, an ancient Rhaeto-Romance language that’s spoken nowhere else on Earth.

Skiing in the Dolomites soon feels like I’m careering downwards through a real-life museum. On day four, I take a cable car to the Dolomites’ tallest peaks above the Marmolada Glacier and I can see the remnants of mountain warfare fought here during World War I.

For two years, Austrian soldiers fought off the advances of Italian troops, carving tunnels and trenches within the snow and ice, like snow-smart rats. They forced them back using explosives to trigger avalanches, but despite their ingenuity, Italy seized control of the region by the terms of that war’s armistice treaty. In the 100 years since, many inhabitants have resisted this colonisation, so the area remains an odd patchwork of cultures, foods, languages and personalities rubbing against one another.

As I ski across enormous snow-covered valleys into new mountains and villages, I don’t know if I’ll be offered strudel and Tafelspitz (boiled meat in broth), or rigatoni and panna cotta, or Ladin dishes like speck dumplings and barley soup. Whatever it ends up being, it’s never rushed – or served to go. I spend my lunchtimes at heated mountain restaurants with floor-to-ceiling window views, waited on by servers who propagate the slow food philosophy.

But for all the postcard-perfect ski villages with their old-world European glamour, or five-star hotels with their atmospheric bars and candle-lit restaurants, it’s the rifugi (huts) high in these mountains which captivate me the most.

While the Dolomites never seem especially crowded – even now in mid-January – when the ski slopes close for the day, there’s nothing like being the only skiers left up here, high above the clouds in our mountain huts. The Dolomites have over 1000 of these huts, and this region has one of the best on-mountain hut systems in the world.

I’m served cold beer on empty patios beyond the huts, with a front-row seat to some of the most unique mountain sunsets in the European Alps. The calcium and magnesium carbonate in these paler dolomite rocks reflect the lower angled sunlight of sunset, causing them to glow a fiery pink, a phenomenon locals call enrosadira. While not a single snowflake will fall on any of us all week, none of us appear to care. Not even a little bit.

THE DETAILS

FLY
Qatar Airways flies from several Australian capital cities to Venice via Doha. See qatarairways.com

Dolomite Mountains can arrange transfers from Venice to the mountains.

TOUR
Dolomite Mountains offers several trips and ski safari options, including this 7-Day Dolomites Ski Safari Experience from €7230 ($11,850) per person, including all breakfasts and dinners, transfers between towns and luggage transfers, five-day Dolimiti Superski pass, a local English-speaking ski guide, four nights in 4+ star accommodation, and two nights in a family-owned rifugio. See dolomitemountains.com

MORE
dolomiti.org/en

The writer travelled courtesy of Dolomite Mountains.