Trip Report
This report is from Sunday-Tuesday, Jan 19-21, 2025
Eat. Sleep. Ski. Après. Repeat.
These five words pretty much summarize what Engelberg is all about.
At 10:45 in the morning, I hopped off the train from Lucerne, a cute Swiss city 40 minutes down the road, and dragged my ski bag from the train station for approximately 30 seconds until I was at the Ski Lodge Engelberg, where I would spend the next several days.
Only a few minutes walk from the gondola leading up to the ski area, Ski Lodge Engelberg is a staple of the Swiss Alps.
Mountain guides, ski movie stars, Freeride World Tour athletes, as well as your average ski bums and skier families are all found within the 18th-century building’s walls, which was bought and repurposed to be a ski-oriented lodge by two Swedish entrepreneurs 15 years ago.
Walking in through the snowy, shoveled-out walkway to the lobby, you find ski memorabilia, books, and artwork filling every visible portion of the lodge.
The staff is friendly and stoked.
The beautiful chalet girls make you feel right at home.
On any given night of the winter, the après scene here is popping off, with fun in-house events like trivia and ‘ski movie night’ weekly.
The Ski Lodge Engelberg is potentially the most diehard ski locale in the Swiss Alps if not all of Europe—of the likes of the Goldminer’s Daughter at Alta, where everyone eats, drinks, and sleeps skiing.
On powder days, the parties wind down a little earlier because the real party is on the slopes the next morning.
Priorities straight.
I rolled up to the gondola on Sunday solo; there were some tourists in the lift line but surprisingly most of them weren’t skiers or snowboarders, but sightseers there for the Titlis rotating cable car, glacier cave at the top of the resort (this was epic, by the way), or just for the pristine views of the Swiss Alps themselves.
We aren’t so different, them and I.
Engelberg isn’t the biggest ski area in the Alps but it’s tall and has incredible access to off-piste terrain—all of which is visible from almost every angle of the resort, making it a freerider’s paradise.
The resort is all above alpine, meaning no tree skiing, but it’s steep, flowy, riddled with couloirs and cliffs and little jumps, and boasts a fun array of groomed trails.
The crown jewel of Engelberg, however, has to be its Titlis rotating cable car.
The Titlis Rotair starts from the top of the gondola and takes you up to almost 10,000 feet (3,400 meters), where the wind whips viciously and the views of the Swiss Alps are more immense than previously thought possible.
From here, I explored fun runs around the Steinberg Glacier, which are steep, technical, and exposed.
One run traversed over large cliffs to a steep face that ran along a tall wall to a big open bowl below.
Another followed the tram cable which had a steep bottleneck in between rock walls.
Both were exciting and shot you out into a giant zone filled with snakey gullies that cut around large 500-foot or more cliffs that you did not want to get stuck above.
Regardless, the terrain was all so playful and fun.
The snow was firm and chalky.
I can see how on a proper powder day this play fires OFF.
I’ll be coming back for that.
Over the next couple of days, I was fortunate enough to be shown around the mountain by some friendly Scandanavians who guided me to some of their favorite zones.
‘Laub’ was a classic 3,000-foot steep headwall they showed me which I found particularly enjoyable.
With legs screaming, we skied Laub all the way down to a lodge at the bottom where a ‘taxi’ shuttled us back to the piste.
That was an experience.
Thanks, Karl.
Laub
I returned later with Swedes Jonas and Hugo to hit the couloir on the skier’s left of Laub which ran alongside a massive 1,000-foot high wall.
It was steep as hell and skied smooth and fast in washy snow for approximately 2,000 vertical feet.
In the couloir, the wall cast its shadow like an ominous giant staring down at me.
Engelberg is known for its “Big 5” classic freeride descents:
- The infamous “Laub”
- The challenging “Sulz”
- The mighty “Steinberg”
- The hidden “Steintäli”
- And the challenging descent from the “Galtiberg”
By the time it was all said and done I would have tasted 4 out of 5 of these Engelberg delicacies, excluding Galtiberg, which drops onto the backside of the resort.
All of these runs are long, steep, demanding, and tremendously rewarding.
As a sort of twisted bonus, a cool, ripping Norwegian skier named Vilde from the Ski Lodge and I took some technical turns down a very steep and tight chute known as the S Couloir.
The snow was less than ideal inside the chute but it wasn’t too hard to lay a ski edge into.
It was “Norwegian snow,” Vilde reflected.
I thought it skied great.
Back at the Ski Lodge by the end of the day, I felt neither defeated nor victorious—only tired.
And also very hungry.
Skiing Engelberg in the choppy, chalky snow is a damn good time but it wears the shit out of you.
So one night I treated myself to a delicious 5-star meal at the Brasserie Konrad, the Ski Lodge’s in-house fine dining establishment.
The blueberry margarita was incredibly tasty, the noodles were soul-satisfying, the steak was tender, and the weird ‘tiramisu-but-different’ dessert thing was downright awesome.
It was worth every Swiss Frank.
Coming back from a long ski day to a nice après scene was a lovely element of my stay at the ski lodge.
Bartenders Bella and Martina kept the beer flowing like wine.
Just watch out for the Swiss mountain guides—they will loop you into a good time whether you want it or not.
I don’t know if it’s possible to have too much fun, but I damn near came close at the Ski Lodge Engelberg.
Even with the lack of fresh snow at the time of my visit, this mountain still rips hard.
And all the locals ski well here.
All of them.
For reasons like these, I’m grateful for my time in Engelberg and am already longing for my next visit.
And there’s only one place I’ll stay when I come back…
Engelberg Statistics
- Elevation:
- Base: 1,050 meters (3,445 feet)
- Summit: 3,028 meters (9,934 feet)
- Skiable Terrain: 82 kilometers (51 miles) of pistes
- Longest Run: 12 kilometers (7.5 miles)
- Lift System:
- Total Lifts: 25-28 (varies by source)
- Types: Includes gondolas, cable cars, chair lifts, and surface lifts
- Snow Conditions:
- Average Snowfall: 10 meters (33 feet) per year
- Snowmaking: Covers about 33 kilometers of slopes
- Season: Typically runs from late October to early May, offering one of the longest ski seasons in Switzerland
Terrain Breakdown
- Beginner: 18 km (26%)
- Intermediate: 42.5 km (61%)
- Advanced: 9.5 km (13%)
Weather Forecast
Photos
