The off-piste skiing in the Dolomites week, hotel based.

This proposal is a week of skiing in the Dolomites, based in a very central town, moving every day in search for the best freeride runs in the central Dolomites. For this purpose, we describe here a typical week: you’ll stay in Arabba, which is located in a very central spot in the Dolomites, at the base of the Sella massif, and close to Marmolada freeride paradise. This will be an idea for your custom-built Dolomites freeride holiday!

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OFF-PISTE WEEK VS FREERIDE SKI SAFARI

What’s the difference between these two suggestions? The hotel week is flexible and lets us choose each day, depending on the snow conditions we will move searching for the best snow. The Dolomites Freeride Ski Safari is an innovative and fun trip: staying in mountain refugios is a perfect way to discover the region. Conversely the freeride skisafari has less flexibility, and when the snow is poor, the only option is the groomed slopes.

CUSTOM-BUILT PLAN

This page describes a typical off-piste Arabba week: we can modify the number of days and the location in the Dolomites. You can decide for example to spend a long weekend based in another central town of the Dolomites. The difficulty of the choosen itineraries will depends on your level. We are ready to work on a tailor-made plan for you!

WHERE

We suggest to stay in Arabba or Malga Ciapela/Sottoguda: Arabba is very central in the Dolomites and Malga Ciapela is at the base of Marmolada freeride paradise and just a couple of slopes from Arabba.

GUIDE SERVICE

For this type of activity, we suggest you choose the guide service instead of the all-inclusive formula. We will be happy to help you book the hotel (you can decide the number of stars you want) and all the logistics, which you will then pay for separately from the guide service: this is certainly more economical and convenient for you and helps us to always give you an accurate quotation of our service.

EQUIPMENT

The guide will provide the avalanche transceiver kit, shovel and probe free of charge if needed. It’s strongly recommended to bring or rent wide skis (from 85mm to 100mm in the center). Skins and touring boots aren’t necessary, but depending on snow conditions they can allow us to ski some great routes with a little touring access. It’s recommended to wear breathable fabrics and to dress in layers: see here “What to bring”.

YOUR MOUNTAIN GUIDE

The skiing Dolomites week is carried out by a mountain guide within UIAGM/IFMGA certified. Local mountain guides most definitely sport the best knowledge and will guarantee your safety and your fun.

WHEN

The Dolomiti Superski lifts are open from the beginning of December to the beginning of April. The best time for off-piste skiing is quite unpredictable and varies from season to season. Statistically speaking, February and March are the best months.

Program

Off-piste skiing Dolomites week, day by day.

DAY 1: THE SKIING DOLOMITES WEEK STARTS!

OFF-PISTE ARABBA: FORFESC AND PIZZAC.

There are so many amazing freeride options in Arabba that one day is never enough to ride them all! Let’s start with some sidecountry skiing as a warm-up. Once you’re ready, we’ll take the main and highest cable car in Arabba, which is called Porta Vescovo. From the top, we’ll start a short but steep hike where crampons can be useful. After 120 meters of positive gain, we’re at the top of Forfesc, soaking in a breathtaking 360-degree panorama. From here, we’ll start skiing along the ridge until we get to the access point for the downhill. Just a heads-up, sometimes a snow cornice here needs to be crossed using the rope. The first part of the route has a pretty steep incline, but it eases off after a few hundred meters. The best part is that the whole route has a nice gradual slope. It’s definitely one of the best in the area!
Ascent: 120 meters.
Descent: 750 meters.
Gradient: max 45°.
If Forfesc is a little bit too much for you, no problem! We can instead tackle another great run called Pizzac, which is an off-piste Arabba descent starting from a little, panoramic peak above the intermediate station of Porta Vescovo. This sheltered run often offers a very good quality of snow, even when you don’t expect to find anywhere! The second half of the run is in the forest, where you’ll find some really fun off-piste skiing among the trees!
Ascent: 50 meters.
Descent: 600 meters.
Gradient: max 35°.
Another options among the variety of off-piste Arabba’s runs are described on this page and they are called Ornella and Burz.

One of the off-piste Arabba runs: the entrance of Pizzac run, Porta Vescovo, Arabba.

DAY 2: GREAT OFF-PISTE SKIING IN SASSOLUNGO DOLOMITES.

SASSOLUNGO FORK NORTH SIDE.

Today we’re off to the gorgeous Gardena Valley! We’ll be following the groomed slopes, passing over the Pordoi Pass and reaching the Sella Pass. Now it’s time to say goodbye to the groomed slopes and put on our skins! We’re so excited to be heading up to one of the most gorgeous spots in the Dolomites! We’ll be starting our ascent at the base of the incredible Sassolungo mountain, with the 5 Fingers and Grohmann peak to our left. The climb will take about an hour and a half, so once we reach the fork, we’ll take a quick break to drink some hot tea from our thermoses. Now it’s time for the fun part! We’re going to take off the skins and start off-piste skiing in this fascinating and shady place, surrounded by huge walls. The descent is never so challenging but very long: it’s a beautiful journey across the Sassolungo massif all the way to Santa Cristina, which is quite a distance from where we started. It’ll be a breeze coming back! We will use the lifts and enjoy the lovely groomed slopes all the way back to Arabba.
Ascent: 350 meters, skins required.
Descent: 1000 meters.
Gradient: max 30°-35°.

A ray of light is breaking through the shadow of the north side of Sassolungo, while we are off-piste skiing.

DAY 3: SKIING DOLOMITES WEEK, FROM ARABBA TO CORTINA D’AMPEZZO.

LAGAZUOI AND 5 TOWERS.

Arabba might not be close to Cortina d’Ampezzo, but it’s fully connected by lifts! So why not relax with a day mostly of groomed and a little bit of off-piste skiing, visiting one of the masterpieces of the Dolomites: the Lagazuoi and 5 Towers area. If you’d rather not waste your precious powder time, let’s take the car and spend all day between the Lagazuoi freeride couloirs and the 5 Towers trees runs! There are so many possibilities here! The runs have all kinds of features. The 5 Towers are perfect for a snowy or cloudy day when visibility isn’t great. We’ll ski among the trees, hopefully flooding the new powder during the snowfall! The Lagazuoi is right next to the 5 Towers, but the terrain is totally different. It’s a bit higher in elevation, and most of the access points require a long traverse where it’s really helpful to have good visibility to find the way. One really cool run is called the “Great Saddle”. It’s a steep valley that’s absolutely perfect for your first advanced experiences!

carring the skies during the Canale della Nonna approach, Lagazuoi, Cortina d'Ampezzo.

DAY 4: OFF-PISTE SKIING IN MARMOLADA FREERIDE PARADISE.

WELCOME TO MARMOLADA, THE HIGHEST PEAK IN THE DOLOMITES!

Here we have some of the longest and best powder skiing in the Dolomites. The nature of the slopes here is pretty unique in the Dolomites: the gradient is constantly between 30° and 40°, and we usually ski on a very open field. Just a quick note to say that the Marmolada is a glacier. It’s something to be aware of, as long as it lasts! Once you’re at the top of the cable car, you’ll find a single groomed run going to the right. The rest of this huge space is just for off-piste skiing, so get ready to explore! On the intermediate freeride page, we’ve described some itineraries. Here we talk about Villetta Maria, which is the longest run of Marmolada and probably of the entire Dolomites. We’ll start from the summit, do a quick safety check before leaving the groomed run, and then we’re off! We’ll be skiing for quite a while on the left side of the glacier, where the environment gets wild in the heart of the north face. Before we reach the ruins of a refugio (which was sadly destroyed by an avalanche in 2020), we’ll turn left and push a little bit to enter some really fun terrain below the Gran Vernel north face. After that, we’ll have to catch the right entrance of the white road, which, after many fun turns, will lead us down at the end, right near a restaurant called “Villetta Maria.”

Ascent: 0 meters.
Descent: 1800 meters.
Gradient: max 35°.

snowboarding off-piste skiing Dolomites: along the Marmolada glacier.

DAY 5: THE OFF-PISTE SKIING IN BADIA VALLEY.

TWO EXAMPLES OF A CUSTOMISED SKIING DOLOMITES WEEK!

Two off-piste runs in Badia Valley are described below. They are very different one each other: the first is easy (some other ideas here) the second is an advanced one, where ski mountaineering skills are required. Once more here we want to clarify that all our proposals are examples of tours which will be modify in order to create a tailor-made plan for you.
Prolagià is the top of a big hill in Badia Valley and can be reached from different towns. There are slopes on two sides of the hill, and the other two sides are wild. We take the lift to the top, then walk on a flat, wide ridge to start the route. The very first part is steep, but open. Later, we ski on gentle slopes among small trees. We can then decide to move towards the lifts or skiing all the way down till the road and take a taxi to move back to the lifts.
Ascent: 40 meters.
Descent: 550 meters.
Gradient: max 25°.

The Sassongher couloir is on the other side of the difficulty scale: it’s one of the most ahestetic skiing Dolomites lines, and it’s visible from many groomed slopes of Badia Valley. From a distance, it looks like that gully is too narrow and steep to ski. The run it’s actually a difficult descent but never extreme in terms of incline and large enough for us to turn all the way down. At the end, there is a short abseil. If you have the right mountaineering experience and a good technical level, it’s one of the best advanced off-piste skiing routes in the Dolomites!
Ascent: 550 meters.
Descent: 1000 meters.
Gradient: max 45°.

Two skiers are taken from the distance while they are looking the view of the Dolomites: Pralongià, Badia Valley, Dolomites.

DAY 6: THE LAST DAY OF THE FREERIDE SKIING DOLOMITES WEEK.

A OFF-PISTE SKIING DAY IN PORDOI.

The Sella massif counts a large number of off-piste skiing runs and some of them are described on the intermediate and advanced freeride pages. The Pordoi cable car is the gate to the summit plateau of the Sella massif, from here the access can be very quick with 0 approach or long, altought technically easy, up to 2 hours and half of skins. So we’ll decide on our goal based on the snow conditions and our group level and maybe we will also decide to spend here more than one day of our off-piste week. Here we want to describe one of the greatest itinerary of the whole Dolomites: climbing first the highest peak of the massif and off-piste skiing from the summit the “Fontane Valley”.
From the cable car station we first ski to the base of the Boè peak pyramid. From here we put on crampons and start the relatively short but tiring climb to the summit. After about an hour and a half, we’ll be there, enjoying the 360° view. The descent is the most direct line from the top of the peak and it goes down by the east and south face. It’s important here to choose the right time of the day for the descent, when the snow is warm enough to be not frozen. A steep, hidden couloir S-shaped leads to the nice and open slopes above Arabba. This is a spectacular descent!
Ascent: 350 meters.
Descent: 1350 meters.
Gradient: max 45°.