Snow-seeking in Norway

Marianna Hunt travels north in search of the white stuff and finds a multitude of reasons to go skiing in Scandinavia

- Marianna Hunt

"We had someone call us while on a ski holiday in Italy," Ben Nyberg of tour operator skiScandinavia tells me as we zoom along the road towards Trysil, Norway's largest ski resort. "He was so frustrated that, for yet another year, there was no snow, he immediately booked to come to Scandinavia instead."

The exasperation is understandable. After too many seasons wading through dirty mounds of Slush Puppie snow in halfmelted Alpine resorts, I too had decided to take the plunge and try a ski holiday in supposedly “snow-sure” Norway.

Trysil, the resort I’d chosen, is just a 35-minute drive from Scandinavian Mountains airport or Salen (actually just across the border in Sweden). This snowy aviation outpost only opened in 2019, and since then companies have been racing to launch direct flights from London, possibly because there are more and more British skiers who, like me, are looking north for some piste of mind.

SkiScandinavia kicked things off with the first direct UK flights in 2022, and on 2 February this year Scandinavian Airlines followed suit. Crystal Ski Holidays plans to join the party on December 21, with routes departing from London Heathrow and Gatwick throughout winter.

“The consistently lower temperatures of Norway [compared with the Alps] mean it is below freezing until April even at the bottom of the slopes,” explains Ian McIlrath of Ski Solutions, another operator. This ensures the snow conditions remain strong across the season; in a good year, some resorts will be open from November to May.

SkiStar, the company that runs Trysil, is so sure of its snow it provides a guarantee: if there isn’t a set number of slopes open during your stay (this season, at least 10), you can get a refund for your ski pass, rental, accommodation and ski school – provided it’s booked through them.