Marmolada

At 3260m the Marmolada Glacier rises above the Dolomites. It is known as the Queen of the Dolomites and is extremely difficult to get to as it deviates far from the beaten path of the green/ counter - clockwise Sella Ronda route and requires a good honest day of skiing ( see below) and good weather to reach it. It is also the home of a tasty citrus - peel spread... according to Gilly.
We had high hopes when looking at the mountain forecast the night before

... and when we awoke there was indeed about a foot of fresh stuff on the high peaks and a blue sky!! The weather man doesn't always lie.

From the village of Arabba in the farthest south eastern corner of the Sella circuit we took 6 consecutive chairlifts before descending about 7km along a beautiful valley trail into the village of Malga Ciapela where the first of three trams soar upwards 2000m to the top. It was a dizzying ride climbing a vertical kilometre of rugged cliff face suspended from a wire with no interval support - just got to have faith in those engineers (and hope they were German and not Italian!) I must admit I got a bit of that "ning - ning" feeling that Steven talks about and by the time we got up top I was pretty apprehensive about what the descent might look like on the other side. The last of the three trams spanned an apparently bottomless gully and caught a few broadsides of gust which didn't help my disposition much but delivered us safely to Punta Rocca where we were able to see our way home down the other side. Just before the third tram there was an exquisitely presented WWI museum which chronicled the rugged battle waged between the Italian allies and the Austrians at the start of the war to secure the high ground. Mike, I think they even had a few of your guns on display there.

This is the start of La Bellunese (the only way down) which at 12km is the longest ski run in the Dolomites and we soon realized the upside to the sequential tram journey - we only had to share this run with twenty other skiers. So we waited for the great unwashed to head down and had the place pretty much to ourselves for an hour of powdery bliss.

After a week of corduroy cruising the kids relished the chance to venture off piste and play in the fluffy stuff...

Half way down lunch at Refugio Tabla Palazza offered up pizza from a wood fired oven and some really good local beer

The views on the way down were not so bad...

And we found the Audi test track...

We rejoined the green circuit after retracing chair lifts and then began a bit of a race against time to complete the circuit back to the base of the Campinoi Gondola before the lifts closed. Skiers are often stranded at various points along the circuit unable to get home and we'd heard that the local taxis make a small fortune from their misfortune.

By the end of the day everyone was using the word "epic" and when we looked at the Ski Tracks data, it did look like a pretty darn good day of skiing!