Grindelwald - Wengen

Nowhere else do you ski underneath a wall like this. The Eiger's mile-high North Face — mountaineering's most storied precipice — looms directly over the pistes of Kleine Scheidegg, with the Mönch and Jungfrau completing the skyline. Below, two villages split the honours: bustling Grindelwald in its green valley, and car-free Wengen, perched on a sunlit shelf and reachable only by the rack railway that has climbed from Lauterbrunnen since 1893.

Racing history saturates the place. The Lauberhorn downhill above Wengen, first run in 1930, is the longest race on the World Cup calendar — nearly four and a half kilometres from the start hut beneath the Eiger to the finish, hitting the tour's highest speeds along the way. Mortals can ski the course all winter and stop where racers hit 140 km/h.

Trains define the experience: the Wengernalpbahn shuttles skiers between sectors, the Eiger Express tricable gondola (2020) rockets from Grindelwald to the Eigergletscher in 15 minutes, and from there the railway bores through the Eiger itself to the Jungfraujoch at 3,454 m — the 'Top of Europe'. It is, unapologetically, the most scenic ski region on the planet.