ALL ABOARD!

Rhaetische Bahn/RhB - Die Rhaetische Bahn faehrt bei Arosa durch die spektakulaere Buendner Gebirgslandschaft. Rhaetian Railway/RhB - The Rhaetian Railway makes its way through the region¿s spectacular mountain landscape near Arosa. Ferrovia retica/FR - La Ferrovia retica nei pressi di Arosa attraversa lo spettacolare paesaggio montano dei Grigioni. Copyright by Rhaetische Bahn By-line: swiss-image.ch/Tibert Keller

Alf Alderson hops aboard the super-efficient Swiss rail system with his skis.

Some time ago I saw an advert for Swiss rail travel – bright red, cutesy-looking trains amongst deep snow and high mountains – and got to thinking “What about a ski trip to Switzerland by rail?”. No faffing about with hire cars and who doesn’t like a train journey (well, as long as it’s not in the UK)?
Which is why, about 12 months later, I’m disembarking from a Rhaetian Rail (RhB) service train at Disentis, having travelled here from Geneva, first on the impressive high-speed, double-decker Inter-City service, and then as we hit the mountains I hopped aboard one of the aforementioned bright red, metre-gauge Rhaetian Rail trains that wind their way through terrain that is more appropriate to goats and mountain bikers than trains.
Their immaculately kept interiors are plain, warm and functional and offer wide, comfortable seats alongside large windows through which to view the spectacular scenery; forget about taking a tablet or book, you’ll spend most of the journey gawping out of the window.
You’ll also find that the trains cater for skiers, with plenty of storage space for your planks whilst your fellow passengers are perfectly used to dealing with people lugging two-metre long bags up and down the station platforms.
Disentis is a small (ten lifts) resort with a big area of quiet, open backcountry, all set beneath a series of peaks around the 3000-metre mark. It’s somewhat out on a limb – so much so that my loquacious guide Adi Schürmann tells me: “The area is known as ‘the jungle’ because we’re a bit off the beaten track”.
This, of course, is a good thing, since it means that Adi and I spend an entire Tuesday in late January skiing off-piste in complete solitude down the Val Gronda, Val Acletta and Val Segnas, three lovely valleys that snake down from the open alpine landscapes at top of the resort through shrubs and forests to the main cable car station back in town.
Each descent offers an impressive 1600 vertical metres, so I was more than glad of a beer at day’s end in the Nangijala Guest House (www.nangijala.ch) where I was staying, just a spit from the cable car station.
At 8.35am next morning I board the train for the spectacular 2.5-hour journey to Arosa. I spend the entire journey with my nose squashed against the window, especially on the 1100-metre climb from the regional capital of Chur (where I change trains for Arosa).
The line clings to vertiginous mountain slopes, wends beneath frozen waterfalls and towering crags, weaves its way through snow-bound forests and past picturesque alpine villages and teeters across improbably high and narrow bridges where anyone suffering from vertigo definitely shouldn’t look down.
I book into Arosa’s slopeside Vetter Hotel (www.arosa-vetter-hotel.ch) and by lunchtime I’m on the slopes. Arosa was recently linked to the neighbouring resort of Lenzerheide via a cable car which takes you over a yawning void from the 2511-metre peak of Hörnli to 2546-metre Urdenfürggli. This means that its modest 70-km or so of pistes are now combined with Lenzerheide’s 155-km, which combined with a stack of freeride terrain provides more than enough skiing to suit anyone.
It hadn’t snowed for some time and the backcountry conditions were not ideal so I decided to take it easy with an on-piste tour of the ski area; I found that the way to make the most of it was to ski Arosa’s sunny south facing slopes in the morning then pop over to Lenzerheide around lunch when the mix of north and south facing slopes are catching the rays too.
I enjoyed two days of blasting down sunny slopes that were rarely too busy – and no lift queues -before setting off to the final stop of my week-long tour, the somewhat hidden resort of Scuol. To get here involved a meandering four-hour journey through the usual glorious mountain scenery which also included passing through the Vereina Tunnel, which at 19.5-km in length is the world’s longest metre-gauge tunnel.
Popping out on the far side of the tunnel I felt like I’d arrived in a different country; hamlets and villages displayed an Italianate architecture rather than the traditional Swiss chalet style I’d previously encountered, and featured wall paintings called sgraffito, whilst the place names – ‘Scuol’, ‘Ardez’, ‘Ftan’, ‘Funtana’ – are of Romansh origin since I was now in the Engadine region, heartland of Switzerland’s fourth language.
My ski guide Peder Rausch has lived all his 60-plus years here, and Romansh is his first language; he gives me a few lessons, translating various pertinent Romansh words (‘alpina’ – small hill; ‘alpetta’ – medium-sized hill; ‘alpuna’ – large hill; ‘muntogna’ – mountain; Romansh isn’t as difficult as I thought..) as well as telling tall tales of times past in this lovely little ski resort.
Scuol acts as the terminus for the Vereina Line and has an end-of-the line feel about it, but in a positive way – it’s like I’ve discovered my own little ski area. Most of the skiers are locals and the atmosphere is friendly and garrulous on the slopes and in the slopeside bars and restaurants.
Conditions are not the best, but even so, as we hoon down the lovely Pista del Sömmi (‘Dream Piste’) on the last sunny afternoon of my travels I reflect that it’s also been a bit of a dream journey – great skiing, great little trains (and always on time!) and scenery to die for whether you’re on trains or skis.

USEFUL INFO
www.disentis-sedrun.ch
www.arosalenzerheide.ch
www.scuol.ch
Rhaetian railways www.rhb.ch
Swiss railways www.sbb.ch
Visit Switzerland www.myswitzerland.com