SaasFee, Where Snowboarders Rule the Slopes

SAAS-FEE, a ski resort in the Valais region of Switzerland where snowboarders rule the slopes, feels like a giant playground for grown-up kids - with ads for iPods on chairlift towers, hotel rooms outfitted with Sony PlayStations and mountainside cafes blasting French hip-hop through outdoor speakers. Its idiosyncratic mix of Continental sophistication and disheveled energy feels surprisingly normal, and everyone from locals to novice riders seems infected with devout enthusiasm for the place, in no small part because it is so achingly beautiful.

Skip to next paragraph Winter in Saas-FeeSnowboarders rule the slopes at this strikingly beautiful resort in the Swiss Alps. Multimedia Saas-Fee Related In North America, Halfpipes That Are a Dream (January 16, 2005) Chris Warde-Jones for The New York Times

The town's cobblestone streets are reserved for pedestrians (no cars allowed).

The village is nestled in a valley 6,000 feet above sea level, and the dozen slender snow-covered peaks soaring higher than 13,000 feet on three sides - including the highest that lies entirely in Switzerland, the 14,900-foot Dom ("dome") - make it impossible to see the sky without craning your neck 45 degrees. The gondola ride up the Allalin mountain offers views of ice-blue glaciers below, torn by crevasses into thick, undulating ridges, and, just outside the window, reveals many of the peaks to be jagged rock faces that stab menacingly at the clouds and often reach right into them.

Snowboarders, in requisite baggy gear, are everywhere. On a recent visit, it was a bit dizzying to emerge from a gondola ride only to find the entrance to the world's highest underground funicular railway, which carries 150 people at a time on a three-minute near-vertical journey beneath a glacier. But that was quickly topped by the cluster of young snowboarders huddled at the exit of the Métro Alpin tunnel, who pulled out and smoked a prerolled joint before heading down a frighteningly steep descent.

At the end of the day, some of the same riders were relaxing with glasses of hot spiced glühwein at the No One Snow Bar's outdoor patio, sitting on sofas at the bottom of the bunny slope to watch for friends finishing one last run. And snowboarders clogged the aisles at the Coop supermarket, the best stop for cheap provisions, before tramping back to their rented apartments in the evening with a case of beer clutched under one arm and a board under the other.

The unspoiled cluster of 200 buildings is in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, and attracts a multilingual crowd. (Conversations can start with excusez-moi and end with danke schön.) Though practically everyone speaks English, it's not until the British arrive on their package tours in January that you'll hear it used with any frequency. But language barriers don't stop Saas-Fee from welcoming anyone willing to suit up and slide down a mountain.

Of all the resorts claiming to be the European snowboarding mecca, Saas-Fee (which for more than a century has been a haven for extreme-sport enthusiasts, from ice climbers to high-altitude hikers to off-piste skiers) may have the strongest case. The Professional Snowboard Association trains on its three 260-foot halfpipes and its snow park of rails, jumps and slalom course. Its steep trails can be linked into an epic summit-to-base-camp nonstop journey that takes more than half an hour, with few of the flat stretches that frustrate snowboarders elsewhere. So many world-class snowboarders ride there that sales representatives from Burton, the sport's top brand, man stations at the bottom, and top, of the slopes in the autumn season, lending out prototype boards free. On one otherwise quiet run early last month, massive sheets of ice went crashing down a mountainside hundreds of feet across the glacier.

Traveling naturalists and local hoteliers dubbed Saas-Fee the pearl of the Alps at the end of the 19th century, and when a paved road first reached the village in 1951, residents upheld its eco-friendly reputation by banning cars. The narrow streets are reserved for pedestrians lumbering about in ski and snowboard boots, and for a small fleet of electric golf carts that buzz around, carrying passengers and, occasionally, wooden barrels of wine perched precariously on the roof.

The town's blocky wooden hotels, rows of overpriced boutiques on narrow streets and nostalgia-driven kitsch bars give it a conservative feel that clashes gently with snowboarding culture. I heard Bryan Adams's "Summer of '69" for the first time, but far from the last, at the cozy Pic-Pic Bar, where skiers and locals gather to drink glasses of lager under a TV showing downhill slalom races. On wilder nights they might approach the tree stump in the corner for a traditional Alpine machismo test in which contestants, usually male and usually drunk, try to hammer a nail completely into the block of wood with one stroke.

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BRIAN LAVERY contributes to The Times from Dublin.

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