Skiing Baqueira-Beret Spain: Day 1
Few Americans think of Spain as a ski destination, but Baqueira-Beret proves them wrong.
Baqueira-Beret, Spain's largest ski resort, offers plenty of terrain, and a singular cross-cultural experience not found elsewhere in Europe's ski country.
The Pyrenees Mountains stand partially in Spain, but Spanish snowsliding remains a well-kept secret.
What better reason to go?
Baqueira-Beret—Spain’s largest ski resort—sits at the southeast end of Val d’Aran, a narrow valley between Aragon and France. The 4.5-hour drive from Barcelona rises from temperate plains rife with orchards and tiny agricultural villages into foothills highlighted by sculpted rock walls surrounding a spectacularly scenic reservoir.
After circumnavigating the water, the road disappears into the Juan Carlos Tunnel, a dark, seven-kilometer tube started in the 1920s but completed only in 1948.
Until that tunnel was finished, accessing Val d’Aran from lowland Spain was nearly impossible. A deep, northern mountain pass allowed accessability from France, however. That isolation and French influence today generates an improbable, intriguing ambience, and a unique culture with its own language—Aranesa.
"Most people speak three languages here," Ana Diaz, local tourist office official told me, "Aranesa, Catalan and Spanish. Aranesa is preferred."
Exiting the tunnel high on a hillside, Vielha popped into view below. Vielha is the valley’s largest town and growing. The skyline was punctuated by construction cranes, and the main street buzzed with apres-ski shoppers, bar-hoppers and traffic.
Travel-weary, our group of six synchronized to the Spanish lifestyle. We immediately took refuge in a siesta.
The next morning’s drive to the ski area advanced through several tiny, postcard-worthy hamlets, where rock-faced buildings rose but a step from the narrow and switchback-knotted road.
Baqueira-Beret’s parking lot ran amuck with foot-and-automotive traffic. We joined many snowsliders who trekked up the last hundred yards of pavement; others jammed a choo-choo tram; cars and busses jockeyed for position to discharge passengers; more people scurried among the stores, small hotels, residences and restaurants that packed the hillside.
Up a flight of steep stone steps, the diminutive base area was crowded and chaotic. We shuffled through the equipment rental process, communicating with many hand signals, and joined the lone lift line. Something odd was afoot, however. Skis and snowboards rode not on feet but in a rack behind the four-passenger seat.
What a strange feeling—riding a chairlift with naked ski boots dangling.
We disembarked onto a plateau from which several lifts radiated up the mountain. There, we stepped into skis or snowboards.
Baqueira-Beret’s expansive terrain stands mostly above treeline, laid out in three sections—Baqueira, Beret and Bonaigua. Groomed pistes, marked by bright orange reflectors, define marked pistes, but one freely slides at will. And, even though some steep trails punctuate the landscape, truly adventurous turf is limited.
On Baqueira, the main hill, two high-speed lifts serve the main face and keep lift lines moving, but the traffic on these front trails quickly grew heavy.
After two warm-up runs here, we departed for less traveled paths that eventually took us to Beret via a lengthy and sometimes steep cruise down a run called Luis Arias. It tight-roped a ridge line, yielding a quarter-pipe effect—up one side, then down the same again—and a marvelous yo-yo feeling.
Beret is dominated by broad intermediate slopes. Over several runs, we worked our way to the resort’s far northern peak, Tuc Deth Dossau, elevation 2,516 meters. We stood gaping at snow-capped peaks that rolled ceaselessly to the horizon until gusting winds compelled us off the precipice and down to Beret’s mid-mountain lodges. Time for lunch.
Two and a half hours later, after consuming multiple courses of "texturas de tomato," salad, paté with foie gras, veal, lamb, anchovies, and fruit, accompanied by numerous bottles of Riojas and Ribero del Duero (superb regional wines), someone suggested that the sun was still shining and we still had time to make another run or two.
A few of us overcame the wine-induced torpor and re-buckled our boots. But, sometime between that last glass of wine, the imperative lavatory visit and the lift ride, clouds rolled in and the light went flat. Flat light above treeline eliminates contrast, impairing visibility. Senses wine-dulled, we proceeded slowly, working tenderly along easy runs, reading the snow with our feet. It took a long time to reach the bottom.
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