5 Days in St. Moritz

The way up from St. Moritz Dorf is old: a funicular to Chantarella dates from 1913, and the one on to Corviglia from 1928, the first funicular in Switzerland to lead straight into a ski area. Both were taken out of service for a big overhaul in summer 2026 (new stations, step-free access), and the operator hasn't said when they reopen. If they aren't running, nothing in the day changes: ride the Marguns gondola from Celerina instead.

The reason to be on the first lift is the White Carpet: at 7:45 am the operator names the funicular and the gondola as the way to freshly groomed pistes on Corviglia and the first turns in the morning sun. It takes an early alarm and it's worth it.

From Corviglia a cable car climbs to just under the summit of Piz Nair at 3,057 m, the highest point of the ski area and the town's own mountain. The view runs over the lakes and down the whole valley. Across Corviglia the operator counts 42 km of blue, 79 km of red and 34 km of black, and the black runs from the top are the serious ones.

Experts also get the western descent from Piz Nair, a freeride route away from the groomed pistes: only with a guide, or the kit and the avalanche bulletin. Beginners can ride up as pedestrians, since pedestrian tickets exist for the Corviglia lifts.

Corviglia is a mountain of wide red runs that you can link toward Marguns and Celerina, and that suits most people. The extras are fun: the Ski Run, a permanent timed giant slalom about 400 m long with cameras that film you, and the Speed Check on run 15, a fenced piste where radar sends you your top speed as a photo.

The snowpark Crowland, near the mountain station, is open from mid-December to early April, and Corviglia Cross is a 600 m skicross course below Salastrains. For a slower run, the Paradiso piste has benches along it and even yoga on snow. Experts have the 34 km of black to work through.

The huts range from rustic to stylish. The Alpina Hütte is described as the oldest ski hut, the Chamanna serves hut classics, the White Marmot is smarter and more modern, and Piz Nair 10'000 Feet is the gourmet summit restaurant. Expect St. Moritz prices on all of them.

Order what the mountain is for: a soup, a plate of Bündnerfleisch (air-dried beef) and a sunny table, and save the fondue for the valley.

Corviglia has three beginner areas, which matters if somebody in your group is new. Salastrains, in the middle of the mountain, has a magic carpet, lifts, a ski carousel, a sun terrace, rental and lockers. The Marguns First Step Park has a drag lift on a wide, gentle slope. Provulèr, at the edge of Celerina, has a child-friendly four-seat chairlift and a T-bar.

Be honest about what comes next: most of Corviglia is red, so the step up from the nursery slope is a big one, and a beginner who finishes the week on easy reds has done well.

Down in St. Moritz Dorf, walk to the Leaning Tower (Schiefer Turm), the medieval tower that is the town's symbol, across from the Kulm Hotel. The Kulm is where Badrutt's winter story is set, and in 1878 it installed the first electric light in Switzerland.

Then stroll the Via Serlas, one of the most exclusive shopping streets in the world, for the window shopping alone. The town has fewer than 6,000 residents and takes an hour to see on foot. The evening here is dinner and hotel bars.

Hanselmann on Via Maistra is the classic coffee house of St. Moritz. Fritz Hanselmann opened a bakery in the Elvezia House in 1894, and the café behind the sgraffito façade now seats more than 200. It's the right place for an Engadiner Nusstorte, a round shortcrust tart filled with caramelized walnuts, and for the pralines in the display.

Have a slice with a coffee once the lifts have closed.

Two cable cars climb from Surlej via Murtèl to the Corvatsch station at 3,303 m, the highest in the canton of Graubünden. On one side the Bernina massif rises with Piz Bernina and Piz Roseg, on the other you look over the lake district of Silvaplana and Sils.

Winter 2026/27 timetable: from 21 November to 12 February the first ascent is at 8:20 and the last at 4:00 pm; from 13 February to 25 April the last ascent is at 4:20 pm. The cars run every 20 minutes. The operator says Corvatsch holds powder until the end of April.

Corvatsch and Furtschellas have about 120 km of pistes: 13 km easy, 89 km intermediate and 18 km difficult. It's a red-run mountain, and a good one for long, open descents. Corvatsch Park is one of the largest snowparks in the Alps and hosted the halfpipe and slopestyle of the FIS Freestyle World Championships in winter 2025.

Experts have off-piste lines with a big-mountain feel, and the Snow Safari links the region: it runs from the Furtschellas mountain station to Corvatsch, then Giand'Alva, on to Corviglia, Piz Nair and Fuorcla Grischa.

Corvatsch has the highest restaurant in Graubünden, the Restaurant 3303 at the summit, where you eat behind windows out of the wind. At Murtèl, the middle station, the restaurant serves pizza.

Furtschellas, reached by cable car from Sils, is the calm side of the area: the operator recommends it to families and anyone after peace and quiet, with views of the frozen Lake Sils. From 19 December to 4 April the car runs every 15 minutes from 8:15, with the last ascent at 4:00 pm until 12 February and 4:15 pm after.

It's the better afternoon for a beginner or a tired leg than Corvatsch. Non-skiers can buy a return to the middle station (CHF 39, about 42 EUR).

The operator calls it the king of ski runs in the Engadin. You ride the Giand'Alva chairlift, then ski a nine-kilometer black run past the frozen Hahnensee lake, just at the tree line, and through a snowy forest down to St. Moritz Bad.

The black rating is real, so beginners and nervous intermediates should take the lifts down instead. The operator's tip is late afternoon, when the sun starts to set. From Bad the Engadin Bus takes about 12 minutes back to the Surlej valley station.

After a day like this, the answer is cheese. Restaurant Engiadina's menu lists a traditional cheese fondue plus tomato, boletus and champagne versions, and its site promises fondue or raclette. The kitchen mixes Swiss and Valtellina cooking: sciatt (buckwheat fritters), pizzoccheri and Grison-style barley soup sit next to the steaks.

Treat one fondue dinner as the splurge and eat simply the other nights.

The cable car from the Bernina Diavolezza station climbs to 2,978 m, and the view on arrival is the reason to come: Piz Bernina at 4,049 m, Piz Palü, and the Pers and Morteratsch glaciers beneath you. Pontresina's tourist office calls the area the festival hall of the Alps.

In winter 2026/27 the first ascent is at 8:40 until 12 February and 8:00 from 13 February, with the last ascent at 4:20 pm and 5:00 pm. Diavolezza and Lagalb together have about 35 km of pistes: none easy, 27 km intermediate, 8 km difficult. Beginners should come for the view as pedestrians (return CHF 46, about 50 EUR) and skip the skiing.

The Berghaus is a mountain lodge and a hotel, and its kitchen leans toward the Italian side of the Bernina: sciatt (cheese-filled buckwheat fritters) and pizzoccheri (a buckwheat pasta), both Valtellina specialties, plus the house Spaghetti Diavolezza and a Wiener schnitzel the operator calls legendary. Order the pizzoccheri.

In front of the lodge there's an outdoor jacuzzi with a view of the range, and rooms if you want a night at almost 3,000 m, far from any village.

Eight kilometers over the Pers Glacier and the Morteratsch Glacier, under the face of Piz Palü, ending at the Rhaetian Railway station of Morteratsch: this is the signature run of the region. The operator calls it Switzerland's longest glacier run and stresses that it isn't groomed, which is the point. The Ikon Pass page says it is only for very good skiers, and that's the right warning.

The operator calls it a safe off-piste experience, but ask at the valley station about snow and markers before you go, and stay on the marked line. From Morteratsch the train back to the Diavolezza valley station takes about 10 minutes.

Lagalb is a little smaller and harder to reach than the big areas, and the operator calls it a mountain for connoisseurs. Its black run is, the operator says, the steepest groomed slope in Graubünden, and the La Rösa firn run is popular with locals. Lagalb is timetabled from 19 December 2026 to 4 April 2027: first ascent at 9:00 and last at 4:00 pm until 12 February, then 8:20 to 4:20 pm. Two restaurants, at the mountain and valley stations, make a good stop.

Get off the train in Pontresina on the way home. The village describes its promenade as the longest in the Engadin, lined with hotels, shops and restaurants, and the hotel bars and lobbies are open to the public. Plan the way back. Pontresina is nine minutes from St. Moritz by train, but on the December 2026 timetable the last direct train leaves around 8 pm, and later the night bus takes about 40 minutes.

The line opened in sections between 1908 and 1910, built partly to reach hydroelectric works and partly for tourists, and ran in winter from 1913/14. It is the highest railway crossing in Europe at 2,253 m, a UNESCO World Heritage line since 2008 and one of the steepest adhesion railways in the world, with gradients up to 7% and no rack.

Take the 8:48 regional train on the December 2026 timetable (St. Moritz to Alp Grüm in 54 minutes). Past Morteratsch and its Montebello curve, the line runs along Lago Bianco to Ospizio Bernina, its high point, where the dam marks the watershed between the Danube and the Po. The panoramic Bernina Express needs a seat reservation; on regional trains it is optional.

Alp Grüm is a station, a hotel and a restaurant at 2,091 m, and the sun terrace of the Albergo Ristorante looks over the Bernina massif and Valposchiavo. The restaurant lists opening hours of 8:00 to 18:00 and hot meals from 11:00, but not its winter days, so phone ahead (+41 81 844 03 18) if lunch here matters.

Get off here, have a coffee in the sun, and catch the 11:44 regional train on to Tirano. If you don't want the whole trip to Italy, turn round here: the train from St. Moritz takes under an hour and the 12:13 gets you home by 1:11 pm.

Lower down, after Poschiavo and its lake, the line reaches one of its showpieces: a nine-arched stone spiral viaduct near Brusio, opened on 1 July 1908. It exists because the track had to lose height without going over the 7% limit, so the engineers wound it in a circle.

You don't get off. Sit by a window and watch the train curl back on itself. Beyond it the line passes the border station of Campocologno and crosses the square of Madonna di Tirano before it ends in Tirano.

Tirano is in Valtellina, in Lombardy, and lunch switches to Italian: pizzoccheri, the buckwheat pasta believed to have started in Valtellina, a plate of bresaola, and a glass of local red. It's a town of about 9,000 on the Adda, where the Bernina line meets the Italian railway to Milan.

Pick a trattoria near the station. The 11:44 from Alp Grüm arrives at 1:00 pm and the 3:00 pm home leaves the station itself, so keep lunch to an hour.

The sanctuary is the most important religious monument in Valtellina, and the Bernina line crosses its square. Tradition says that on 29 September 1504 the Virgin appeared to a local farmer, Mario Omodei, in a vegetable garden, asked for a church in her honor and warned of the plague. Building began on 25 March 1505.

It lies under a kilometer from the station. Take the 3:00 pm regional express home (St. Moritz at 5:11 pm), or the 5:00 pm for a longer afternoon.

The Cresta is a natural-ice run that ends at Celerina, ridden head-first on a toboggan with rakes on your boots for steering and braking. The first run was finished in January 1885, and the club calls the sport one of the last truly amateur ones. The record from the top is 49.92 seconds, and the average is one fall per twelve rides, more for beginners.

For 2026/27 the run opens on 17 December and rides every morning except Christmas Day, with riding from the top from mid-January. Beginners must be over 18, sign a waiver and arrive by 7:45 am in December and 7:15 am in January and February. The beginner school costs CHF 700 up front and includes five rides, equipment and tuition, but the first day brings only two or three rides, so one morning won't use them all. Women ride on the same terms as men.

The Cresta has a neighbor, the Olympia Bob Run, which also runs from St. Moritz to Celerina and is the only natural-ice bobsleigh run in the world: 1,722 m, 19 corners, a 130 m drop, rebuilt every winter from snow and water by a crew from South Tyrol. It hosted the Olympics in 1928 and 1948, and the 2026/27 season opens on 22 December.

Watching is free except on a few competition days. The best spot is the Horse Shoe, the sharpest corner, where athletes feel up to 5G. Or ride: a guest ride in a four-man bob costs CHF 269, includes helmet hire and a glass of sparkling wine, takes about 75 seconds at up to 135 km/h, and is open from age 16 with a parent's written permission.

The painter Giovanni Segantini spent his last years in the Engadin, and this museum, built in 1908, holds the most comprehensive collection of his work. He died on 28 September 1899 on the Schafberg above Pontresina, near the hut that now bears his name, while working on the middle picture of his Alpine Triptych, and was buried in Maloja.

From 10 December to 12 April the museum is open Tuesday to Sunday, 11 am to 5 pm, last entry 4:45 pm. It is closed on Mondays, on 25 December and on 1 January. Adults pay CHF 15, and under-6s are free.

Lake St. Moritz freezes hard enough to hold horses. The 2027 dates are published. The 42nd Snow Polo World Cup runs from Friday 22 to Sunday 24 January 2027. White Turf, the horse racing held since 1907, has race days on three Sundays, 7, 14 and 21 February 2027, with family days on the Saturdays before. The organizers say more than 35,000 visitors come.

A Monday-to-Friday week misses most of this: only Snow Polo's first day is a Friday, White Turf races on Sundays. To see an event, shift your week. Flat racing, trotting and skikjöring (horses pulling skiers) all run on the snow. Without an event, the lake is a good place for a walk.

The Upper Engadine has about 230 km of cross-country trails. The easy classic is the Direttissima, which passes the three lakes of Sils, Silvaplana and Champfèr, and the famous Engadin Skimarathon trail runs 42 km from Maloja to S-chanf. The 2027 marathon is on Sunday 14 March, with events through the week before it.

You need a trail pass (the fees pay for grooming), sold at the tourist offices, the cross-country schools and online. Start from Silvaplana, which also keeps you close to Corvatsch for tonight. If you've never used narrow skis, take a lesson first.

The Corvatsch operator itself suggests the plan: a fondue dinner at the Alpetta restaurant, in one of its cosy rooms, before the night skiing. The Hossa Bar is the après-ski address.

Book a table in advance.

Every Friday from 4 December 2026 to 9 April 2027 the longest illuminated slope in Switzerland is lit for night skiing. It's slope no. 10, 4.2 km from the Murtèl middle station down to Surlej, groomed first on Friday evenings and open from 7 pm. In December and January it runs until 1 am (last cable car 12:40 am), from February to April until 2 am.

The evening ticket is CHF 38 for adults and CHF 23 for children, the early ticket from 7 to 9 pm is CHF 28, and a Party Booster from 10 pm includes a CHF 6 Hossa Bar voucher. The regional pass, the annual passes and the Ikon Pass aren't valid, and tickets are sold only at the Surlej valley station.