One of my best shots is of an elderly Bavarian, about my age, making a fresh track in the snow. Sunshine has turned snow into sequins. In the distance, an onion-domed church is silhouetted against a clear blue sky. The skier tells me that a famous Nordic race, many kilometers long, goes this way before ending in Oberammergau. Other great backdrops Along a road leading north from Cortina d'Ampezzo is an area of breathtaking beauty, a high plateau noted for polo played on snow.
Fir trees droop under the weight of a new snowfall.
The jagged peaks of the Dolomites, too sheer to hold snow, look golden in the sun. In many a mountain pass, above the tree line, you know that on the next switchback, cars may be parked along the road and their owners out in the sun, moving through rolling snowfields. It is a common scene on a Sunday afternoon. The Italian town of Bormio dates back to Roman times. But bacchanals back then couldn't have been as much fun as the race, done mostly on Nordic equipment, that runs through the town each winter.