Liz has had a copy of this ski poster for nearly 20 years, though she knew nothing about the ski area until now.
Diavolezza and Lagalb are on the road from St. Moritz SE toward the Bernina Pass into Italy, maybe a 15 minute drive from the center of St. Moritz. Bus and train service is available if you don’t have a car. On the drive there’s view up to the Morteratsch glacier.
Skiroute 31 is marked on the map descending that glacier, but it was closed as the toe of the glacier has receded and made the lower part of the run treacherous. It could probably still be skied with a private guide. There’s a train stop at the bottom to return to Diavolezza.
The ski areas are on the left side of the map below.
Each area’s main or only lift is a top to bottom tram, but that’s 2,900 vertical for Diavolezza and nearly 2,600 for Lagalb.
The Berghaus hotel and restaurant is at the top of Diavolezza’s tram at 9,767 feet.
We skied down to this chair, which serves maybe the upper 1,000 vertical with a couple of pistes.
Views from top of the chair:
The upper half of tram vertical is mostly too rugged to stray from the piste. But this short cutoff of a piste #2 switchback was an easy call.
Our next two trams we took piste #3, which opens up to some off piste skier’s left about halfway down. I’m on our first run there.
After that run we got a quiche up top in the Berghaus, where we also watched a 6 minute virtual reality video of helicopters, skiers and climbers around Diavolezza, Corvatsch and the Piz Bernina between them. Liz is on the Berghaus view deck with head of the Morteratsch Glacier in background.
View down the glacier, Piz Bernina is probably the high peak at left.
On our last Diavolezza run we took then highest traverse left from piste #3.
Liz scored the first untracked pitch.
I pushed farther out the traverse to get a much longer but quite mellow untracked face.
We regrouped and skied the #25 piste to a moving ramp that took us under the train tracks to the Lagalb base.
From the Diavolezza tram, Liz took this picture of Lagalb.
Also this picture looking past Lagalb to the Bernina Pass:
Lagalb offers a challenge to join the 8848 Club. That’s the height of 29,021 foot Mt. Everest in meters. They give you an RFID armband and you must climb this peak about 200 feet above the top of the Lagalb tram 4 times.
Add that to 11 runs off the Lagalb tram and you join the club. We got to Lagalb after 2:30PM and were content with 3 tram runs. The view off the back of Lagalb deep into Italy shows a small ski area at distance right center.
We skied the two main pistes 22 and 23. The view from the bottom of those wide open slopes shows that surely Lagalb is the St. Moritz area of choice for an uncontested powder day.
That face is illuminated with NW exposure in late afternoon, and I was a bit cautious how the snow might be 5 days after the last storm. So we ventured out there only on our last run. Liz was off piste for about the middle third of the descent and had no trouble making some fresh tracks.
I skied first near the edge of tracks at far skier’s right.
Finding the powder still excellent I continued through the lower section, which yielded powder turns even in its more constrained sections.
We skied 18,400 vertical, about 4K of powder.
I am quite confident that Diavolezza/Lagalb is James’ kind of ski area, likely overlooked by 90+% of St. Moritz visitors.
Diavolezza and Lagalb are on the road from St. Moritz SE toward the Bernina Pass into Italy, maybe a 15 minute drive from the center of St. Moritz. Bus and train service is available if you don’t have a car. On the drive there’s view up to the Morteratsch glacier.
Skiroute 31 is marked on the map descending that glacier, but it was closed as the toe of the glacier has receded and made the lower part of the run treacherous. It could probably still be skied with a private guide. There’s a train stop at the bottom to return to Diavolezza.
The ski areas are on the left side of the map below.
Each area’s main or only lift is a top to bottom tram, but that’s 2,900 vertical for Diavolezza and nearly 2,600 for Lagalb.
The Berghaus hotel and restaurant is at the top of Diavolezza’s tram at 9,767 feet.
We skied down to this chair, which serves maybe the upper 1,000 vertical with a couple of pistes.
Views from top of the chair:
The upper half of tram vertical is mostly too rugged to stray from the piste. But this short cutoff of a piste #2 switchback was an easy call.
Our next two trams we took piste #3, which opens up to some off piste skier’s left about halfway down. I’m on our first run there.
After that run we got a quiche up top in the Berghaus, where we also watched a 6 minute virtual reality video of helicopters, skiers and climbers around Diavolezza, Corvatsch and the Piz Bernina between them. Liz is on the Berghaus view deck with head of the Morteratsch Glacier in background.
View down the glacier, Piz Bernina is probably the high peak at left.
On our last Diavolezza run we took then highest traverse left from piste #3.
Liz scored the first untracked pitch.
I pushed farther out the traverse to get a much longer but quite mellow untracked face.
We regrouped and skied the #25 piste to a moving ramp that took us under the train tracks to the Lagalb base.
From the Diavolezza tram, Liz took this picture of Lagalb.
Also this picture looking past Lagalb to the Bernina Pass:
Lagalb offers a challenge to join the 8848 Club. That’s the height of 29,021 foot Mt. Everest in meters. They give you an RFID armband and you must climb this peak about 200 feet above the top of the Lagalb tram 4 times.
Add that to 11 runs off the Lagalb tram and you join the club. We got to Lagalb after 2:30PM and were content with 3 tram runs. The view off the back of Lagalb deep into Italy shows a small ski area at distance right center.
We skied the two main pistes 22 and 23. The view from the bottom of those wide open slopes shows that surely Lagalb is the St. Moritz area of choice for an uncontested powder day.
That face is illuminated with NW exposure in late afternoon, and I was a bit cautious how the snow might be 5 days after the last storm. So we ventured out there only on our last run. Liz was off piste for about the middle third of the descent and had no trouble making some fresh tracks.
I skied first near the edge of tracks at far skier’s right.
Finding the powder still excellent I continued through the lower section, which yielded powder turns even in its more constrained sections.
We skied 18,400 vertical, about 4K of powder.
I am quite confident that Diavolezza/Lagalb is James’ kind of ski area, likely overlooked by 90+% of St. Moritz visitors.
