The Black Forest features in the childhood memories of hundreds of thousands of Germans as the place where they first strapped those long slidey things to their feet. There are at least a dozen mini ski resorts scattered through the mountains, ranging from Vogelskopf (one lift and a couple of pistes), to the slopes of Feldberg with 50km of downhill.  Most have a mixture of cross-country routes and pisted slopes, and they’re all within an hour’s drive of key airports like Freiburg, Basel (Switzerland), and Strasbourg (France). Each has a different, hand-crafted flavour, unlike the mass skiing destinations up in the Alps.

Those Alpine ski destinations have significant drawbacks which don’t necessarily feature in the brochures.  By committing yourself to a holiday up amongst Europe’s highest peaks, you are usually incarcerating yourself in a purpose-built (ie ugly) community where skiing is practically the only occupation on offer, and where the price of everything is suitably inflated. What happens if you don’t like it? You get tired of it? Or one of you gets injured? Too bad. You’re stuck in your mountain fastness for a week, and you’ll just have to grin and bear it, and watch others having fun while your cash drains away.

Feldberg is the main downhill resort

Not so in the Black Forest. Here the ski resorts are good value (the ADAC found that prices can be up to 50 percent cheaper than in the Alps) easy to drive to, and uncrowded. The region’s lower altitude (highest point just 1,493 metres, compared to Alpine resorts which start at 2,000 metres plus) will ensure that the temperature is warmer, although that can mean a shortage of snow. It is a destination for shorter stays and last-minute decisions, and for people who want to mix skiing with other activities.

The Feldberg mountain hosts the main resort, with 28 lifts and a World Cup run. A lift pass here is €28 a day (expect to pay at least €10 more in the Alps), and at the weekends it can get busy with groups of students and young adults, doing skiing on the cheap. There’s bunkhouse style accommodation for the groups, but for the most part skiers stay in typically handsome Black Forest farmhouse and guest house accommodation, where prices are unlikely to be more than €30 per person, B&B.

Within easy reach are the airport towns, Basel, Freiburg and Strasbourg, each with good stuff to see. Then there’s Donaueschingen, the pretty Black Forest village at the start of the Danube. Stuttgart, home to Mercedes Benz and Porsche. The Hohenzollern castles at Hechingen and Sigmaringen, and the cuckoo clock industry around Furtwangen. There’s plenty to do.

If you prefer your skiing to be more demanding, but still German, see our page on Germany’s Alpine resorts. And there are other ski destinations further north at Sauerland, in the Harz Mountains and over in the Ore Mountains and in Thuringia.

Official Black Forest wintersports site

Skiing in its Alpine form is a very expensive holiday. Skiing in its east German form is quite a different story, for the ski resorts in the Ore Mountains (Erzgebirge) in Saxony and in Thuringia are amongst the cheapest in Europe, and certainly the best value in Germany.  In the Ore Mountains, whose main resort Oberwiesenthal is the highest town in Germany at 914 metres, you can get a six-day package with accommodation, food and ski pass, for as little as €219 per person. And in the Thuringian forest a four-night package for cross-country skiers, including meals and baggage transfer along the route, costs from €180.

Of course higher prices is just one of the consequences to committing to an Alpine skiing holiday. There are others. Usually you are incarcerating yourself in a purpose-built (ie ugly) community, high up in the mountains, where skiing is practically the only occupation on offer. What happens if you don’t like it? You get tired of it? Or one of you gets injured? Too bad. You’re stuck in your mountain fastness for a week, and you’ll just have to grin and bear it, and watch others having fun while your cash drains away.

On the other hand, the lower altitude of this east German skiing can mean that the snow is far less reliable. Accordingly it’s a destination for shorter stays and last-minute decisions, and for people who want to mix skiing with other activities for a broader-based stay.

A former training ground for GDR skiers

Of the two key regions, Thuringia is mainly undulating forest, and so is best for cross-country skiing and tobogganing, with a bit of downhill thrown in. The resorts are tiny – Oberhof is one of the biggest and only has four lifts – but then this is also Germany’s cultural triangle, so there’s lots to see and learn about Goethe, Luther, Bach etc, and an array of castles such as the imperial Wartburg to see, along with the city of Weimar, which has no fewer than 16 UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

The Ore Mountains (Erzgebirge), particularly the Fichtelberg above Oberwiesenthal, were once the key training area for GDR skiers, and remain a favourite destination for athletes intent on competing in the Biathlon (cross country skiing plus rifle shooting). As it is on the border with the Czech Republic, Oberwiesenthal’s clientele is interestingly mixed and this keeps the prices down.  There’s a sufficient array of downhill slopes served by the seven lifts to keep an unambitious skier occupied for a couple of days.

Airport access is from Dresden, which helps make a strong case for coming here. The rebuilt city has a gruelling but interesting history, great architecture, opera and art galleries, and a superb location on the banks of the river Elbe. Plus the brand new, ground-breaking Military History Museum.

Information on the Fichtelberg ski resort

Oberwiesenthal packages

Contact for Thuringia Tourism

There’s a ski region an hour’s drive east of Cologne and Düsseldorf that not many people have heard of, not even Germans. Start to tell them about this self-styled ‘largest snow paradise north of the Alps’, and they’ll look at you as if you were mad. But it is there, in the Sauerland Wintersports Arena, with a dozen different venues (biggest names Willingen and Winterberg) and over 100 pistes.  And yet its peaks rarely reach higher than 800 metres.

There are several advantages to such a low-lying ski destination. If you go skiing up in the Alps, you will be incarcerating yourself in a purpose-built (ie ugly) community, high in the mountains, where skiing is practically the only occupation on offer, and where the price of everything is suitably inflated. What happens if you don’t like it? You get tired of it? Or one of you gets injured? Too bad. You’re stuck in your mountain fastness for a week, and you’ll just have to grin and bear it, and watch others having fun while your cash drains away.

Snow cannons work hard when conditions are right

Sauerland’s lower altitude means that it is warmer, but also that its snow is far less reliable, although snow cannons work hard to supplement what nature provides. Accordingly it’s a destination for shorter stays and last-minute decisions, and for people who want to mix skiing with other activities for a broader-based stay. It is also a great deal cheaper, with a day pass at Winterberg (more than 50 ski lifts) costing half the price of a pass in the Alps.

Specialities here are toboggan runs, cross country routes and floodlit skiing to accommodate locals who want to ski after work, and there’s a big après-ski scene, particularly in the mountain hut on Ettelsberg. The weekends can get particularly busy with Dutch visitors, for whom Sauerland is no secret.

One you’ve had enough of the skiing, you’ve got the heartland of the Brothers Grimm just nearby (their museum is in Kassel) and the best of Germany’s designer shopping in Düsseldorf.  Meanwhile Dortmund and Essen, to the northwest, are home to great examples of how Germany has turned its industrial dinosaurs into tourist attractions, particularly with Essen’s Zeche Zollverein, ‘the most beautiful coal mine in the world.’

If you prefer your skiing to be more demanding than Sauerland can offer, but still German, see our page on Germany’s Alpine resorts. And there are other ski destinations in the Black Forest, in the Harz Mountains and over in the Ore Mountains and in Thuringia.