It felt like a platform-nine-and-three-quarters moment. We stepped from the train at Voss station straight into a stylish gondola to be whisked up to the top of the mountain, after making just one platform change from Bergen airport. Some three hours after touching down on the tarmac, we were skiing the vertiginous slopes of Voss. This small resort, in the Vestland country of western Norway, is a magical place, regardless of how you arrive. But apparating like this, straight from the streets of London, was the kind of move that would have made Harry Potter himself proud.
It was also—though I say so myself—bang on trend. Tour operators are increasingly seeing a rise in demand for skiing short breaks. Last winter, Crystal Holidays, the UK’s largest tour operator, reported that long weekend bookings were up 10 percent year-on-year since the pandemic. Relative newcomer Heidi holidays, meanwhile, reported a 58 percent increase in long weekend ski bookings in 2024.
Voss is one of the places that stands to benefit. The resort has seen a big increase in interest recently particularly from British skiers, a fact that can be attributed to the short, easy transfers, on the recently-built “Green Line”—the rail and gondola connection from Bergen, which was completed in 2019. It also has an enviable snow record, despite not being particularly high. The top lift only reaches 964m above sea level, 400m lower than the top of Ben Nevis. But Voss sits at roughly the same latitude as Anchorage in Alaska—far north enough that it’s increasingly seen as an appealing, snowsure alternative to many of the resorts in France.
We could have carried on skiing all evening—the resort offers night skiing three times a week as well as an après-ski night on Saturday—but after half a day of rediscovering our ski legs like newborn foals, we took the gondola back down into the recently refurbished Scandic hotel. There, we stretched out in the sauna, before enjoying an excellent dinner of duck at its Haik restaurant. Travel days so often feel wasted on a ski holiday, but not this one.
The following morning, we woke up refreshed and ready to explore. Voss isn’t massive, but its nine lifts offer access to 45km of nicely varied runs. Despite the low altitude, and the fact that we’d come in April, at the end of a challenging season throughout Europe, when tour operators in some Alpine resorts were bussing guests to other ski areas, almost all of them were open.
Accidental adventures
My husband and I were travelling with a school friend of mine, his wife, and two of their children, and a tradition of our trips is sampling waffles with hot chocolate. The rustic Storastovo café didn’t disappoint, but for lunch we preferred the more chichi Hangurstoppen restaurant by the gondola station. In a nod to history, it still has one of the two tiny old cable car cabins—christened Dingle and Dangle—on its terrace.
Until ten years ago, to reach the ski area from the train station you had to queue up to squeeze into one of these with 24 other skiers. The new gondola, however, can transport more than a thousand skiers per hour. And yet, word doesn’t seem to have got out yet. Apparently the only time it gets busy is on particularly snowy Saturday mornings, immediately after a train from Bergen comes in.
For all its family-friendly credentials, Voss isn’t short of challenging runs. Bolstered by lunch on our second day, we were able to persuade my friend’s wife to try the black World Cup Run, which has hosted stages of the competition three times. She aced it, declaring at the bottom that she actually preferred it to some of the reds. With the snow protected by the forest from the sun, it was certainly in better condition.
I’d been itching for some off-piste action all winter, but the snow base wasn’t ideal. So when my friend nipped back to the hotel for a Zoom meeting and his wife decided she was done with being dragged down ever steeper runs, I thought that with their more adventurous children we could settle for following some fellow skiers down a short stretch parallel to the piste. Nothing major.
We stopped briefly to take photos of the lake disappearing into the haze, only to realise when we got going again that we had lost sight of the other skiers. Where had they gone? We followed what seemed the obvious track down, but it felt like we were miles away from civilization. I knew that Voss’ off-piste was part of its appeal, and that every winter it hosted a stop on the Junior Freeride World Tour—but I hadn’t expected to be leading a stage of it!
I reckoned the pistes were somewhere to my left, so I guided my party over summer pastures to a snow bridge—or rather the remains of one, with the broad brook in full flow and no possibility of jumping it. Erp. Luckily, everyone was still full of enthusiasm. We backtracked over the meadows to attempt a descent down a narrow path between rocks, followed by a steep drop—cue excited yelps behind me—picking up enough speed between silver birches to reach another snow bridge. Thankfully, this one had survived spring.
And then, to my relief, we could see the pistes and I was able to deliver the kids safely back to their parents. I thought I’d wait to reveal the full details of our escapade when everyone was suitably relaxed. Perhaps enjoying a cocktail served from the gondola cabin bar on the hotel’s terrace, soaking up the smell of pine sap as the sun hit the wood. But when we got there, I thought, why not wait until after a few more drinks?
The last train home
Voss is very different to most Nordic resorts, as it’s a town in its own right. There’s plenty of interesting architecture, including a church from the 1400s, the turn-of-the-century Fleischer’s Hotel, made entirely out of wood, and several fine-dining restaurants. We noticed that one, the Elysée in the Park Hotel, was voted top restaurant in Norway for wine by the glass. Here we indulged in a multi-course tasting menu of scallops and beautifully-prepared cod with paired wines. “But if it’s by the glass how do you stop the wines from oxidising?” I asked the sommelier. In response, he showed me a device that injects inert argon gas into the bottles as they pour, meaning they can offer a wide selection of the 45,000 bottles in the cellar.
“We could be back at the hotel by three and still make a 7pm flight”
In any other resort, the next day, our last, would be a rather sad one, mostly spent travelling, perhaps after a few rushed runs. But staying at the buzzy, metropolitan Scandic, we didn’t need to worry about bus timetables, taxis, or roadworks. We could just go skiing, knowing that as long as we were back soon after 3pm we would be on the 7pm flight home. I was grateful for the chance to carry on as, even in a small resort like Voss, the ski nerd in me had found it curiously hard to tick off every last piste. How had we managed to miss the Badnakrokjen and Alphacrossen runs?
Watching from the higher drag lifts as teenagers did back flips on natural jumps, we had our clue. These were the runs alongside the snow parks. And so off we went to ride through them—the six of us feeling so inspired, that we even tried the jumps and boxes in the smaller of the two. We drew the line at the giant kickers of the Alphaparken, however, preferring the skiercross course alongside it. After lunch, we still had time for a few more blasts down the World Cup run. And then, a mere four hours later, we were taking off from Bergen airport on our flight home, delighted at having carved out such an action-packed break, in such a short period of time.
And as for that under-the-radar freeride foray with the kids? Well, even after a few drinks—or maybe because of them—I never did tell my friend. It would have been a shame, I reasoned, to ruin the magic of the moment.
Snowhow
Our Trip
Colin’s trip was supported by Visit Norway and Voss ski resort.
Getting There
Norwegian flies direct from London to Bergen from £71 return. From Bergen Airport, you can catch the tram, then train and then the new gondola straight to the slopes of Voss, from NOK317 (£9.95) one way.
Where to Stay
Colin and his party stayed at the Scandic Hotel, which offers doubles including breakfast from NOK1,690 (£126) a night.
