Lucas
This Saturday we returned from our skiing week in Seiser Alm in Val Gardena ski region. We have been there for the 4th time and again, we had 6 days of perfect weather. As always, I’m going to share with you some photos, a movie, and some useful hints from this great week in the Dolomites.
Table of Contents
Siusi
When we visited Alpe di Siusi before, we used to stay in Ortisei. If you follow my blog from some time you might remember that I was writing about Seiser Alm and Ortisei in one of my articles. We have special feelings for this region – our kids learned to ski there and they just feel like a fish in the water there.
To get to the Alpe di Siusi you can use cable car in Ortisei or the one in Siusi. As we have never been to Siusi (also know as Seis am Schlern), this time we wanted to find the accommodation there.
Seis am Schlern is a small alpine village in South Tyrol Dolomites. The village lies in the shadow of the 2 563 meters high Schlern mountain.
The village is really small with just few restaurants, bakery, pharmacy, and one Spar supermarket. That’s a huge difference to the Ortisei where you have plenty of shops and restaurants.
Paten Farmhouse
We booked our stay at the farmhouse called Paten. It’s a small family business led by friendly hosts – Ingemar & Evelyn with their four daughters.
Our apartments were really spacious and perfectly clean. Each day we could order fresh bread for the morning and buy homemade products from the farm like jams, honey, cheese or butter.
Kids have gone crazy when they noticed that so many different animals live on our farm – among the others, cats, sheep, cows, and goats become the most popular in the eyes of our kids. Immediately, on the first day after our arrival, all living creatures on the farm have received new names given by our children.
We had really great time there and definitely it was not our last stay there. If you would ever wonder where to stay in Siusi, I can certainly recommend you to stay in the Paten farmhouse. Just contact Evelyn via their website, and please don’t forget to forward best regards from Lucas 🙂
My daughter just loved these goats Cows were there too
Ski Bus to Seiser Alm
As the farmhouse was not located in the village center, except the first and the last day, we decided to use a bus to get to the cable car. The bus was circulating in the loop so it was not a problem to get there.
Ski Pass Prices and Ski Deposit in Seiser Alm
On Sunday – our first day of skiing we had to take a car to bring all the skiing equipment and rent a ski deposit. We booked the big locker at the top of the cable car in the K&K Sport. Luckily we had a free locker there without any booking in advance – it was not the high season yet. Next time we will book the deposit in advance. We paid 84 EUR for 6 days – our friends booked the one at the bottom station and paid 10 EUR less. Both solutions are good but we preferred the one on the top as you can get to the cable car really light, with no equipment and you can dress in at the top.
In general, the cable car station in Siusi is much better than the one in Ortisei. It’s spacious, with good infrastructure, facilities, and a large bus station.
As we were off the high season, we paid for our Seiser Alm (Alpe di Siusi) ski pass 261 EUR per adult and 183 per Junior. The price list for the 2020 season is available under this link.
Skiing in Seiser Alm (Alpe di Siusi)
And now I’m going to share with you some photos from my 6 days in Seiser Alm. If you would like to see the map of all slopes in Alpe di Siusi, you can download it here.
First, take a look at my YouTube video – I took these shots with my GoPro. That was the first time I had this camera on slopes:
Now let’s go through photos – I will give you a short description of what you see in captions:
During our stay we could watch great event happening on the slopes – between 15th and 23rd of January, Alpe di Siusi was the host for the FIS Slopestyle World Cup where the world’s best freestylers were did evolutions on the specially prepared ramps:
Goldknopf
Goldknopf (Punda d’Oro) is the highest lift in Seiser Alm (2 210 m). Beautiful views from the top of the Goldknopf makes it also one of the most interesting tracks there:
As I wrote at the beginning, we used to stay in Ortisei and we were climbing up to the Alpe di Siusi from the opposite side, using the Mont Seuc cable car.
The problem was that we always had to climb with the Mezdi lift and then there were 200 meters of a very steep slope. Our kids just hated that and that was each day big stress for them.
It seems that more people complained about that as this year we could use alternative track through the woods – a very easy one.
Cable Car Malfunction
On Tuesday, just after we climbed up with the cable car, it got broken. Serious technical problem eliminated most of the skiers from getting to the slopes (or made it very difficult).
What did it mean for us? Yes, for the rest of the day, slopes were almost exclusive for us!!!
Florian and Williams Hutte
Few words about the best slopes in Seiser Alm – in our humble opinion it’s the Florian ski track. Great views, covered from both sides by woods, wide track, perfect from all skiers – from beginners to pros. At the top of the Florian lift, you can find Williams Hutte – a small restaurant where you can drink or eat something. We were frequent guests there.
Williams Hutte Florian is the closest ski track to the Sasso Lungo and Sasso Piatto mountains
Track 34
Behind the Williams Hutte, you can find track number 34 where you can go through the small village with a tiny church:
Small church on the Track 34 Track 34
Pufflatsch
Next on the list of our favorite places in Alpe di Siusi is Pufflatsch – the most exposed to the sun peak in Alpe di Siusi. Must visit the place on sunny days. The lift to the Pufflatch Bullaccia is combined type – it contains 6 seat coaches and gondolas.
Thursday’s live… … music show at Puflatsch
Paratroopers Over Seiser Alm
On Thursday for the whole day, Italian army paratroopers were having the military exercises. The airplane was circled over the whole territory and was dropping paratroopers. They were landing in the random spots and then, the task was to join the others in the designated place
The airplane was circled over the Alpe di Siusi If you will take a closer look, you will see paratroopers on the left to the sun
6 Sunny Days in Seiser Alm in January 2020 – Wrap Up
As that was our 4th time in Seiser Alm we can see that this region is developping – new and modernized ski lifts, new tracks, investments in the infrastructure – that’s really great. It’s getting better and better each year.
We have a big sentiment to Seiser Alm as our kids started skiing there. I think we will come back here again in two years. Next year we will try something else.
If somebody would ask me to say which location is better – Ortisei or Siusi, I would say that it depends on what are your needs. If you need a lot of shops, a living town, restaurants, and bars till the night – pick Ortisei. If you are strictly focused on skiing, it’s better to stay in Siusi – really great cable car station, shorter lines to buy ski pass, really great and spacious ski deposit and I think more variety of tracks available immediately just after climbing up with the cable car.
Featured image source: pixabay.com