Macugnaga

The praise is for the landscape and the absence of crowds: the village lies beneath the east face of Monte Rosa, the highest wall in the Alps. People come for what lies off the piste, and the Monte Moro and Pian di Gallo sectors are treated as freeride ground with a wide choice of lines. The pass is cheap, midweek queues are absent, and the village keeps its Walser character.

The hardware draws criticism: the chairlifts are old and very slow, and the cable car from Staffa to Alpe Bill holds only fifteen people, so queues form by mid-morning. Groomed pistes are few and short, and there is no run back to the village from the Monte Moro sector. The lifts have also stood idle: one winter passed with effectively no skiing, the Belvedere chairs restarted only in summer, and the upper cable car section to Passo Moro was shut for a long period after an accident.