This week’s travel dream: Skiing the Spanish way

Spain has a reputation for beaches, bullfights, and paella—not so much for skiing, said Christopher Solomon in The New York Times. But “what few snow enthusiasts know” is that the Pyrenees, which separate Spain from France, “hide some three dozen ski resorts.” When I heard that skiing there is done in traditional Spanish style—with “great eating almost every hour” and wine and siestas interspersed—I booked a ticket.

Several villages “anchored by 12th-century churches” are scattered throughout the Val d’Aran, a region where Spanish and Catalan are spoken alongside French and Aranese, a language unique to the valley. But at 9:30 one morning “in the heart of ski season,” I heard no voices, because no skiers were yet circling the grounds of the Baqueira/Beret resort. “No self-respecting, night-loving Spaniard” climbs out of bed before 10, apparently. A “spoked Mediterranean sun” was already shining bright when I reached the mountaintop, and the white mountains managed “a decent imitation of the Alps.” I inquired about skiing the resort’s star backcountry run, Escornacrabes, but my timing was bad. The run is open this winter but was at the time closed because of a snow drought. Fortunately, the resort had extensive artificial snow, and I contented myself with the Bonaigua sector, where pines and “tight gullies” resembled “the better ski areas in the American West.”

The local customs would never be mistaken for Colorado’s, though. “Spanish skiers don’t wolf down a lukewarm burger” and rush back to the slopes as Americans do. Instead, they take their lunch late, with wine, and they savor the experience. At first, I wasn’t sure I could adapt, but eventually I felt “the seductive pull of that Mediterranean rhythm.” I began waking up later, skiing up to slope-side restaurants for espresso more frequently, and lingering over meals longer. On my last afternoon, I skied up to a cabin that operated as a champagne bar. My watch indicated that there wasn’t much ski time left, but I ignored it. I instead “plopped into a deck chair facing the sun, shut my eyes,” and let the very thought of a flute of bubbly unwind me.

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Doubles at Hotel Val de Ruda (hotelvalde​rudabaqueira.com) start at $208.