Where you can still ski like in the old days

Detachable, equipped with heated seats and a hood – faster and more modern lifts have been and are being built almost everywhere in the winter sports areas. So are the whole Alps a high-tech resort? No! Some small ski resorts are bucking the trend.

You can still experience the adventure of the T-bar lift and enjoy the winter-white landscape in wonderfully old-fashioned, slow chair or button lifts. Where else can you find such cozy retro ski areas? Rule of thumb: avoid the well-known and famous winter sports regions.

But even those who are out and about in the ski lift paradise of Tyrol will find what they are looking for. There, visitors should look for ski areas that are flagged as family-friendly, for example Nesselwängle in the Tannheimer Tal, Zahmer Kaiser or Konradshüttle in Vils.

There are no kilometer-long black runs here, but slopes and pistes for the whole family. Not only for the speedy snowboard mother or the carving father, but also for slow riders and of course for the little ones. You are immediately reminded of the past, of your own first turns in the snow, when you worked your way from the plow to the stem turn and finally to the parallel turn over many winters.

In Switzerland, too, you can still ski like it used to be, for example on the Schatzalp in Davos with its T-bar lifts. They even say: We guarantee natural snow! A big promise, since nobody knows how the winters will turn out. What is meant is: snow is not made. If real snow has trickled out of real clouds, they drive, if not, then not. Clamping old-fashioned lift bars under your bum is also still possible in Disentis in Graubünden.

In the German Alps, too, there are sedentary lifts here and there. T-bar lifts run at the foot of the Tegelberg and close to the Bavarian royal palaces. And you have plenty of time to admire the gentle landscape in the Ammergau Alps at the Hörnlebahn, the oldest double chairlift in Bavaria. The lift, built in 1954, takes an incredible 22 minutes to climb the 500 meters to the summit.

The Allgäu Buchenbergbahn is also such a retro means of transport. The website promises that you can take the double chairlift “all the way up” to 1140 meters and “weave down the long, varied descents to the valley station”.

Pretty touching, that statement. Even the expression "wedeln" comes from the time before the invention of carving skis. As well as the hope for a snowy winter, because in view of climate change, of course, a snowy "summit" at 1140 meters and a valley run that ends at 800 meters can no longer be assumed.

However, the manageable retro areas where you can still go skiing like in the past are threatened with extinction. Because they are expensive for the communities because they have to turn off a relatively large number of staff for the lift operation for a few guests. And it is becoming increasingly difficult to get spare parts for lifts that are mostly decades old, for example if a bracket breaks.

So if you value comfortable skiing, you should go to such comfortable ski areas, otherwise they will soon no longer exist.

Winter is approaching and in some places the ski areas have already opened. Snow cannons are used to provide enough snow. But they are real power guzzlers. The result is higher prices.