Branäs is a smallish resort with a lot of family-friendly blue slopes. It didn’t take long for a few favourites to emerge, mostly based on the availability of chair lifts. Button lifts are cute but take forever to actually get anywhere. And you’re on your own all the way – can’t talk to anyone else. Chair lifts on the other hand turn skiing into much more of a social activity.
The slopes down in Mattesdalen with its four-seater chair lift were quite long and had some really nice stretches, but also a horrible icy patch in the middle where three slopes met. Every time we got there it was really crowded, with people struggling to get past the ice and the churned-up drifts of snow on top.
When we tired of skiing over there, we spent hours simply going up and down a single slope on the other side. The slope itself was mostly in the sun, in good shape, neither icy nor uneven, and the six-seater lift there seemed brand new and got us up the mountain smoothly and comfortably. After a while we knew the individual features of that piste by heart – keep to the left here at the top, stay away from that icy patch next to the lift queue, watch out for skiers coming in from the side over here.
Adrian worked on braking less and getting his turns more parallel. Later in the afternoon he tried out the bumpier ground just off the piste, under the lift. Ingrid challenged herself by dramatic hockey stops, aiming to throw as much snow in the air as possible (or on Adrian’s skis when he’d already stopped before her).
Branäs is situated at a low elevation. Where the peak in, say, Åre or Idre is above the treeline, offering dramatic views of windswept snow and ice, in Branäs you’re never far from civilization. There are trees all the way up to the top of the mountain, and houses everywhere between and around slopes. Very convenient, but I did miss the wide mountainous vistas, and the peace and quiet of skiing through a slope surrounded by nothing but forest.
