Time to polish yer poles, powderhounds! You know that time of year is already around the corner, so I decided to offer some quick notes on best Euro-bets this winter for their mix of prime downhill action with a gay old time après-ski (in a soon-upcoming post I’ll tackle North America, and down the road I aim to focus on top slopes in the Southern Hemisphere, so stay tuned). Not that there’s much—in most cases, you’ve gotta import your own scene. But there are also a handful where there’s something going on all season.

Down the road apiece, I’m looking to scout out ski spots in Eastern Europe and in South America (when it’s winter during the northern hemisphere’s summer). But for now, in keeping with the “foreign-relations” angle of our site (and our books), we’ll start with the sophisto slopes of Western Europe’s top four biggies (where your Gay French, Gay German, and Gay Italian for Love + Hookups will of course come majorly in handy).

Austria Ja, mein Schatz, Arnold Schwarz- enegger and the Von Trapp family’s homeland is just rippling mit thrusting peaks and well-known Tirolean resorts like Kitzbuhel, Klagenfurt, and especially the Innsbruck area (host of the 1962 Winter Olympics). Obviously, the big I’s a picture-postcard little city that best combines slopes (in the outlying villages of Igls, Tulfes, Mutters, and Aximer Lizum) and gropes (sorry, I was reaching for a clever rhyme, but what I really mean is the best skiland social scene). OK, so it’s not Vienna (or even Salzburg or Graz) in terms of the scene—but it does have several bars and cafés, and it’s right in the thick of things, snowsportsmanly speaking (and closer to Munich than to Vienna, by the way); get more details, including gay-friendly places to stay, at QueerTirol.com. For gay chalets in ski towns nearby, consider the Hotel Alpenhof, a half hour away in Fügen-Zillertal, or the beary nice Pension Montana in Achenkirch, 45 minutes away. Another ski area with a certain amount of gay vibe is the above-mentioned Klagenfurt, between Innsbruck and Graz. In February and March, a German outdoors group called Männer Natürlich runs gay ski weeks in Ischgl, Kitzbuhel, and Arlberg. More details: www.SkiAustria.com and the Austrian Tourist Office, with its very own gay section.

France The Rhône-Alps and Savoie départements bordering Italy and Switzerland include the world’s biggest ski region and a few famous names (Chamonix, Courchevel, Val d’Isère) along with resorts that are plenty appealing if a little lower on the radar (La Plagne, La Clusaz). There are middling to majorly buzzy après-ski scenes in most of local resorts — and more than a few G/L schussers scattered throughout. But for more specifically queer action you’d need to head to the bigger local cities, like Lyon (famed for its dining, silk-making and UNESCO World Heritage Old Town), Grenoble (fetching host of the ’68 Winter Games and university town — par-tay!), and Annecy. This last, a small, cute lakeside city just south of Geneva, Switzerland, is especially convenient to beaucoup de slopes — just over an hour from Chamonix, 90 minutes from Courchevel, and two hours from Val d’Isère. It’s got lots of little bridges and canals, museums and galleries, a medieval castle — and almost a dozen gay-oriented business, including a dance club, sex club, and not one but two saunas). Just 40 minutes from Annecy is the little resort town of La Clusaz, with dozens of restaurants and nightspots in addition to Beauregard and four other peaks soaring up to 8,530 feet. For more info, try Franceguide, Skifrance.com, and Gay Provence.

Italy More than a few people wouldn’t immediately think sunny Italia when it comes to skiing (though certainly more so since the 2006 Winter Olympics), but you’ll find it outstanding in the Dolomites, a nice chunk of Alps in the south Tyrol, snuggled along the Swiss and French borders in the north of Piedmont and the Veneto plus Valle d’Aosta and Trentino-Alto Adige. Big names including Cortina d’Ampezzo, Courmayeur, Bolzano, Belluno (site of yours truly’s very first ski trip!), Cervinia, and Sestriere (where parts of the ’06 Olympics were held and whose Club Med was the base for the annual Euro Gay Ski Week in ’02). Italy’s the least gay-friendly of the countries on my list, but you can still hump it downhill to a bigger city with a gay scene like Turin (Torino in Italian), an hour and a half from Sestriere, or Venice, just under two hours from Belluno. Of the resorts mentioned above, you’ll find plenty of fags and some dykes sprinkled throughout, but Cervinia in the Valle d’Aosta is one that might especially be worth a look, as a couple of its hotels (the Albergo Grandes Murailles and Les Neiges d’Antan) popped up on GaySpace.it, as did one of its discos, the Etoile. Also, within 30-45 minutes of several swell ski spots like Val Gardena, Merano, and San Martino (aka Reinswald), Bolzano has several gay clubs and even a bath house (get updated specifics from the Homosexual Association of South Tyrol. If you head to Val Gardena, chances are you’ll find some kind of crew of butt pirates at the gay-owned Hotel Maciaconi. Check with my buddy Fabrizio Mescoli’s group Sci Gay Veneto re trips it’s running this winter, and get more info on the overall scene from SkiItaly.com, DolomitesItaly.com, and Suedtirolerland.it.

Switzerland This almost all-mountain country is, language-wise, a three-fer: you’ve got yer pick of resorts that do their schussing in German (like St. Moritz, Zermatt, Davos, Saas-Fee, Grindelwald, Gstaad, Arosa), French (Verbier, Leysin, Les Diablerets), or Italian (Nara/Leontica-Cancori). But it’s the big cities like Zurich, Geneva, Bern, Basel, Lucerne and Lausanne that have the kicky queer scenes; while the slopes are spectacular, the resorts around them aren’t exactly schwul meccas. Probably the closest you’ll find, 6,000 feet up in the German-speaking canton of Grisons (home of glam St. Moritz) a couple of hours from both Zurich and Lucerne, is the 50-hotel town of Arosa, with famous nightspots like Nuts and Kitchen Club attracting a hot mixed crowd where you’re likely to find something to your liking (the Hotel Eden is especially gay-friendly — it even runs ads with naked muscleboys posing in the snow); the Grisons capital of St. Gallen, with several gay clubs and no fewer than three bath houses, is an hour and a half away. Then of course Arosa also hosts the annual Switzerland Gay Ski Week — January 5-11 in 2008—pulling in 500-plus snow queens (check out this video from this past winter’s event; if you miss Arosa’s week, there’s another one called Swing 2008, being held this season March 1-8 in Lenzerheide/Rothorn, an hour and 45 minutes from Zurich). Also a couple of hours from Zurich and Lucerne, Davos is another homo-popular world-class (and very upscale) resort. More info: Skiswitzerland.com, MySwitzerland.com, GaySwitzerland.com.

Now it’s up to you — pick a peak, and happy ski trails!

Yours truly,

Dave

This entry was posted on 11.10.2007 at 4:43 pm by Dave and is filed under BabelBlog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.