NIGHT SKIING
IT FEELS very strange to be up a mountain at 8pm, clipping my boots into bindings, adjusting my helmet and pointing my skis downhill. While most holidaymakers are enjoying an aperitif, I am at the top of the Corvatsch preparing to take on Switzerland’s longest floodlit piste – a 2½-mile run to St Moritz.
The slope ahead looks fairly well-lit but seems to recede swiftly into moonlit dark as the horizon vanishes. ‘Let’s go,’ says my guide as he issues a blood-curdling yelp – somewhere between a yodel and the dying throes of a strangled cat – and skis away at speed. We’re off.
The first thing I learn about night skiing is that the cold makes the snow peculiarly crisp and your skis creak as if they are opening an ancient door reserved only for the high mountains.
Around me I hear the occasional British voice cutting through the gloaming. ‘This is amazing!’ shrieks one. ‘ Nearly lost it on that last bend!’ comes another, which quickly reminds me to focus.
By now, we’re down the steepest part of the course and make a stop at the Hossa Bar, the mid- slope venue where clusters of intrepid skiers are enjoying gluhwein or schnapps for those in need of greater Dutch courage for the final push to the bottom.
Snow Night, as it is known, takes place here every Friday. For a fee £21, or £13 for children under 12, you can ride the cable car to the top of the Corvatsch as many times as you want until 2am – although the later runs can be rather more perilous, especially as the drinks begin to flow more freely.
For those who live and work in St Moritz, it’s a chance to let their hair down one night a week throughout the season and enjoy stunning views over their glamorous and illustrious village.
Night skiing is only just taking off with a foreign audience, probably because it is less advertised than t he many other activities t he world’s oldest resort has to offer, including the Snow Polo World Cup, and of course the Cresta Run, the famous skeleton toboggan course founded by a group of British enthusiasts in the late 19th Century. With 322 days of sunshine a year and some of the best boutiques and restaurants available in the Alps, maybe people here are simply too exhausted.
‘They shouldn’t be,’ says my guide Othmar, who acts as Switzerland’s only outdoor butler – a special winter concierge who can organise anything from night skiing to weddings in the snow – for the fivestar Carlton Hotel in St Moritz.
‘It’s a fantastic experience, and it’s a different way to enjoy the mountain,’ he adds.
As we unclip our skis for the last time and gaze back up at the piste while groups of other smiling faces head for the cable car, I couldn’t agree more.
Seven nights’ B&B at the Carlton Hotel St Moritz (carlton-stmoritz. ch) costs from £2,764pp with The Oxford Ski Company (oxfordski. com), based on two sharing, and includes return flights and a daily 100 Swiss francs food and drink credit per adult at the hotel.