Laax and Flims

Laax, with its neighbours Flims and Falera, sits above the Rhine valley in Graubünden, and it does two quite different things well.

Laax itself is a small village, home to around 1,600 people, in the Surselva district of Graubünden, and it is usually reckoned one of the more popular resorts in eastern Switzerland. Flims, Laax and Falera operated as three separate resorts until they were brought together under the Weisse Arena group, which now markets the skiing under the name LAAX while keeping the older name Flims for the summer season.

Winter: snowboarding

Laax has been the centre of European snowboarding since the sport arrived, and it stayed there deliberately: the resort was among the first to allow boards when others banned them, and it now has one of the largest snow parks in the world, four halfpipes including a 200-metre superpipe, and an indoor freestyle hall for training in summer.

The wider area — around 220 km of piste, up to 3,018 m on the Vorab glacier — is large, high and reliable, and perfectly good for skiing if you have no interest in doing tricks.

The resort architecture is unusually modern for Switzerland, all concrete and glass rather than chalets, which divides opinion.

The area runs around 29 lifts in all, with four separate snow parks, and includes five valley runs with guaranteed snow. Non-skiers are catered for too, with a toboggan run open for sledging, including sessions under floodlight at night.

Summer: the gorge

The more remarkable half, and almost unknown outside the country.

About 9,500 years ago the Flims rockslide — the largest in the Alps, some 12 cubic kilometres of mountain — came down and dammed the Rhine. The river cut back through the debris over millennia and left the Ruinaulta, the Rhine gorge: white limestone walls up to 400 m high, with the young Rhine running through the bottom.

It is called the Swiss Grand Canyon, which is an exaggeration and is not entirely unfair.

Three ways to see it:

• By train — the Chur–Disentis line runs through the bottom of the gorge, and it is an ordinary service. This is also the Glacier Express route.
• By raft — rafting and river-boarding trips run through it in summer.
• On foot — viewpoints from the rim above Flims, with the Il Spir platform cantilevered over the drop.

Caumasee

A lake in forest below Flims, of a green so intense it looks artificial, sitting in a hollow left by the same rockslide. A lift takes you down from the road, there are boats, and swimming is the point.

Its level rises and falls by several metres over the year for reasons that are still not fully understood, since it has no visible inflow.

Hiking

The lifts run in summer as well as winter, and in that season they carry walkers rather than skiers. Routes link Flims, Laax and Falera to each other and to points further up, including Naraus above Flims.

Getting there

• By train and bus — Chur is the railhead (Zurich an hour and a quarter), then a bus in about 40 minutes.
• By car — straightforward off the A13.
• From Zurich airport — Zurich is the nearest of Switzerland’s major airports to Laax. Getting there means two changes: onto the direct train to Chur at Zurich’s main station, and onto a bus in Chur. A single ticket bought for the final destination, at the airport or from the bus driver, covers both the train and the bus. Trains and the connecting bus each run roughly hourly, and the whole trip takes a little over two hours.
• By taxi — possible door to door, but at several hundred francs each way it is not usually worth it next to the train-and-bus route above.
• Regional travel pass — a regional travel pass, the graubündenPASS, covers public transport across the canton, or just its northern or southern half, including the Rhaetian Railway (which also runs the Bernina Express) and PostAuto buses, plus discounts on some mountain railways. It is sold either as a fixed run of days or as a flexible allowance, such as any two days within a week, and there is a version for cyclists that includes transporting a bike.

When to go

December to April for the snow, June to October for the gorge, the lake and the walking.

The area also runs a large electronic music festival in April at the end of the ski season, which fills every bed for a week.