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Nine Canadian heads slowly swivelled, tracking the smouldering Italian blonde swaying past our al fresco lunch

table in Corvara in Italy’s Dolomites. We’d just bagged the meaty, 1,300-vertical-metre Val Mezdi in remarkably good snow, and now we were marinating in a stew of red wine, beer and grappa in the broiling late-March sun, awaiting the next overlooked Latinate supermodel. Someone turned his avalanche transceiver to “search,” emitting a rapid cadence of beeps that sent us over the edge and drew a glance and sly grin from the object of our attention.

In the past six days we’d gone clear through the Dolomites, following a classic route running southwest to northeast. The extended aesthetic feast had been organized and led by John Hogg, a veteran Canadian-born, Swiss-certifi ed mountain guide. With 30 years under his belt—including nearly 40 ascents of the Matterhorn—Hogg simply adores the Alps. His mind is a living encyclopaedia crammed with thousands of descents, hundreds of touring routes, countless lifts, hotels and hoteliers and taxi

drivers, train schedules and bus routes, end-of-descent village restaurants, and fellow guides with whom to exchange ideas.

A Hogg specialty is what the Euros dubbed “Ski Safari.” I prefer “Touring in Style.” Hogg’s meticulously planned itineraries fully exploit the region’s lifts. While we walked uphill most days, we skied probably 10 metres downhill for every metre gained with climbing skins. Yet we saw some wild terrain, skiing

John Hogg shows seven boys from Toronto what Italy’s Dolomites are all about. BY GEORGE KOCH

groomed runs mostly to transit between backcountry zones. Best of all, no malodorous mountaintop dorms or latrines. We stayed only in nice hotels. We dined sumptuously. Our main baggage was shuttled, so each evening we’d arrive to fi nd our clean clothes, shaving kits, etc. By day we carried only light packs with lunch, water and avy gear. Superb.

We rendezvoused in Innsbruck, Austria, to be shuttled over

the Brenner Pass by Sepp, a loquacious

minibus-driving South Tyrolean, one of Hogg’s many cronies. Sepp dropped us at an Italian albergo on Passo

Rolle, a broad summit beneath

classic grey-and-ochre layer-cake cliffs. The group

consisted of Freddie, Jim, Rick, Meyer, Paul, Gerry and Peter, well-heeled Toronto businessmen. Peter was the group’s founder, having met Hogg in the mid-’90s (and soon scaled the Matterhorn with him). All were solid skiers familiar with places like Fernie, Whistler, Colorado and the Alps. For some, this was their fi rst serious touring. For others, their fi rst time in the Dolomites. Some hoped mainly to experience challenging, hard-to-fi nd terrain in good snow. Others felt the opposite: the European lifestyle was the best part.

The weather on Passo Rolle was beautiful. Too beautiful. Hogg had planned to launch our tour via a steep and somewhat exposed climb into the vaulting spires of the Pale di

We rendezvoused in Innsbruck, Austria, to be shuttled over

the Brenner Pass by Sepp, a loquacious

minibus-driving South Tyrolean, one of Hogg’s many cronies. Sepp dropped us at an Italian albergo

Rolle, a broad summit beneath

classic grey-and-ochre layer-cake cliffs. The group

consisted of Freddie, Jim, Rick,

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John Hogg shows seven groomed runs mostly to transit between

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74 s k i c a n a d a » W I N T E R 2 0 0 7

San Martino, accessing a long, north-facing descent. But the soft spring snow didn’t look likely to freeze overnight, making both the climb and descent dicey. Luckily, the lads seemed happy to revel in the Italian Alps, where even ordering dinner is an adventure. So we spent the first day reorganizing gear, doing an avalanche transceiver drill and cruising the pleasant, empty and surprisingly well groomed pistes of Passo Rolle. The day’s apotheosis was the outdoor mountain-hut lunch: gnocchi doing the backstroke in a pool of olive oil and melted butter, with flagons of red wine.

Gradually the temperature fell and early one morning we skinned up outside the door of our next hotel, the Rifugio Flora Alpina, and began walking through fresh snow, past lovely larch woods up a long valley toward a saddle gleaming in the Mediterranean morning light. Looking back we could see the little basin holding the Flora Alpina, a charming meadow ringed by large firs and

looking across at the magnificent Pale di San Martino. We’d enjoyed the Flora Alpina’s nice rooms, the heated boot-drying rack, the woody little bar and the superb dinner of wild forest mushrooms, pasta and steak. From here one can also ski the lift system of Passo San Pellegrino, which forms a chunk of the astounding, 450-lift Super Dolomiti ski pass system which includes Val Gardena and Cortina. Around dinnertime rain had given way to slush and graupel, but by dessert the flakes were coming down thick and straight.

The morning’s walk took nearly three hours, but Hogg set such a well-measured pace that I reached the summit refreshed. Some guides virtually run onto the peak, then sit there smirking. Hogg takes care of his clients, regardless of age or ability. “You need to pace yourself as a guide, always having enough energy not just to bag the peak, but to get your clients, some of whom may be at their personal limit, back down again safely,” Hogg commented after I reached the saddle. “To

tour successfully in the Alps you have to have imagination, an ability to fantasize ahead of time, being able to visualize a long and complex run and imagine what a route miles away and several days’ distant might be like.”

The run down the long, remote, empty Valle de Franzedas felt like wilderness. Making turns with Hogg, it was clear that he truly loves to ski. That seems redundant—but I’ve skied with mountain guides who seem to prefer walking. Many over-rotate their upper bodies and skid lazily to conserve energy. Hogg’s turns had a silky smoothness that masks their technical sophistication. He made a fully rounded turn that exploited the ski’s flex, and edges aggressively, a legacy of his racing background.

This being the Alps, our wilderness run ended at a cable car. It scaled a sheer rock wall rising hundreds of metres, then swept along the gigantic Marmolada Glacier, the Queen of the Dolomites, up to 3,270 metres. These lifts access a rugged glaciated expanse

s k i c a n a d a » W I N T E R 2 0 0 7 75

of nearly 2,000 vertical metres. The meaning of Touring in Style really hit home: after a morning spent moving under our own power, we got an afternoon of lift-serviced off-piste exploration.

The new snow, sadly, was wind-blasted and very dense. Instead of exploring the Marmolada, we skied to the next interconnected area, Arabba. With more than 1,000 vertical metres of mostly north-facing terrain, Arabba’s a great ski area. Its pistes were in fabulous shape, and adjoining them lay some decent powder. Down in town, we checked into another nice hotel, our bags already there.

Hogg was born in Ottawa in 1948 and raised in Vancouver. He grew up hunting, fishing and skiing. In the early ’70s he became the Canadian rep for Head skis and got to travel with the Canadian national ski team. “It was

amazing to hang out and go freeskiing with Ingemar Stenmark, Gustavo Thoeni and, of course, the early Crazy Canucks,” Hogg recalled over dinner that evening. Hogg’s time on the White Circus opened his mind to the vastness of Europe’s ski areas and the unbelievable off-piste and touring potential. Soon Hogg began training to be a mountain guide and joined CMH heli-skiing.

At CMH’s Bugaboos lodge Hogg met the love of his life, Maria-Theresia of Andermatt, Switzerland. The Alps soon were calling both of them, and in 1984 Hogg was accepted into the Swiss mountain guide’s association. He’s reportedly the only Canadian ever to become a Swiss guide, although many Swiss have moved in the opposite direction. He and Maria-Theresia later made their home in Invermere. Three sons all became fanatical skiers. Today Hogg’s annual cycle consists of a winter of ski-guiding in the Alps, some springtime touring, a few weeks at home, summertime mountain guiding, more time at home, and an autumn of hunting in B.C.’s Purcell Mountains.

Despite our group’s packed days, we were barely scratching the Dolomites’ humongous possibilities. Hogg would have loved to do the crazy Langkofelscharte near Val Gardena, say, or the wild backside of Cristallo above Cortina. But time grew short.

Our most excellent adventure was descending the Sella Group. This is the huge rock mesa that’s the centrepiece of the famous but lame “Sella Ronda” piste safari. Skiers are confined to mostly flat ground, staring up at the Sella’s astounding rock walls. We took the absurdly flimsy-looking, antique cable car from Passo Pordoi, bringing us right inside the massif. Our perspective shifted abruptly to peering out and down. We noticed quite a few skiers taking one knee-quivering look around from the top—then riding back down.

Hogg led us across a small plateau, along a narrow shoulder, and then on an easy uphill walk around a spectacular basin with cliffs above and below. Soon we were perched atop my favourite type of terrain: a couloir. The entry to Val Mezdi. “You should see this when it’s hard snow,” commented Hogg. “One time another guide’s guest lost it at the top and disappeared over a roll.” He was killed. In our case the gully

was soft, forgiving winter snow. Delightful to hop-carve—not unlike some of the nicer terrain at Blackcomb. Everyone had a hoot.

After the rollover the couloir broadened, with untracked snow on either side, then spilled into a bowl and finally turned into a huge, cliff-lined canyon exiting the Sella Group. John led us onto a massive side-slope, probably a mile wide, without a track on it. I traversed way out onto a sun-drenched northwesterly slope, stopped and contemplated what looked to be the best pitch of the trip. Summoning everything within, I hurtled down the fall line, devouring the slope in 14 swooping, exhilarating turns. Sublime.

For our last day Hogg had saved the famous Drei Zinnen tour. We’d dined marvellously and overnighted in the simply phenomenal Hotel Santer in Toblach. Early the next morning we were met at the trailhead by two sinister-looking locals with ancient double-track Ski-doos hauling rickety coaches. Fifteen minutes of two-stroke stench later, we were on a remote pass. Lining the rock face above were weird rows of rock windows: shooting portals—relics of the brutal mountain combat between the Austrians and Italians in the First World War.

We traversed an icy, exposed slope beneath these shooting galleries, then skinned up. The saddle provided an amazing view of the astounding Drei Zinnen, the sheer triple-spire of dolomitized limestone appearing chiselled by the hands of Tolkien’s dwarves. The long descent led down a valley of twisting, cliffy slopes in nice spring corn snow, exiting onto a flat river plain and a lunch hut, where Sepp, his minivan and our bags were waiting.

The Dolomites traverse made it clear that John Hogg is far more than a mountain guide. He’s a personal ski instructor and mentor, an uproarious raconteur, a technical consultant, a connoisseur of fine foods and wine, an equipment procurer, a logistics magician, a hectoring schoolmarm and an outrageously opinionated conversationalist. In short, a one-man rollicking non-stop Alpine off-piste road show. ❄

To book a trip, call Hogg in Invermere, B.C. at 250/342-7313, on his Swiss cell phone at (011) (41) 78 678-4614 or e-mail him at hoggjw@telus.net.