Sunlight on the Sassongher

For a moment I couldn't see a thing. The sun had caught my visor and turned the whole world white, and then, as my eyes adjusted, the Dolomites appeared: jagged peaks against an impossibly blue sky, the valley below dotted with little villages. The mountain air was sharp and clean. Whatever I had carried up with me, the worries of a heavy few months that had clung like frost, began to thaw right there on the slope. We hadn't come to escape. We had come to remember how to be joyful.

The Sassongher in Corvara made that easy. This five-star hotel sits on the hillside above the village, and from the moment you walk in, it wraps itself around you: a stone fireplace with the flames dancing, wood-panelled walls, an atmosphere that manages to be stately and wonderfully cosy at once. It feels like a grand family house that happens to have the Dolomites in the garden.

Our suite had a balcony with a front-row seat to the whole spectacle, and one morning we watched deer moving across the slope next door. But the moment I'll keep is the outdoor hot tub. On clear nights it glows through the colours of the rainbow, and lying in the warm water with the stars overhead and the snow all around is pure, unrepeatable bliss. There's an indoor pool and a sauna too, for the evenings when the sky won't cooperate.

Lying in the warm water with the stars overhead is pure, unrepeatable bliss.

Every great hotel has someone who quietly makes everything work, and at the Sassongher it is Paula, the concierge. Always smiling, she was our guardian angel all week: booking ski lessons, steering us towards the small independent boutiques worth seeking out, and knowing exactly where to dine. She sent us to Sport Posch for our equipment, where the expertise was spot on.

Then there is the food, and in Alta Badia the food is serious. The dinner I still dream about was at the Bistrot at Hotel La Perla, also in Corvara: buzzing yet intimate, with chef Simone Cantafio's cooking reason enough to make the trip. Crisp Dolomite egg under shavings of fresh truffle. Partridge with foie gras. Beef tartare with marrow roasted in rosemary. Afterwards, the sommelier, a born storyteller with a twinkle in his eye, led us down into the award-winning cellar, a dim labyrinth of dusty bottles, and conjured up sunlit vineyards ripening in the shadow of these very mountains.

One of the joys of this corner of the Dolomites is that you can ski from village to village, and one day we skied over to La Villa and La Majun, a family-run hotel steeped in Ladin hospitality. The air smelled of freshly baked bread. Its owners, Natalie and Roberta, have an enthusiasm that is utterly infectious, and their team greeted us like long-lost relatives. The Ladin cooking, part Italian, part Austrian, comes in portions that would satisfy an Olympian, and after a day on the slopes there is an indoor pool looking out at the snowy peaks and a small but perfectly formed spa, with massages, facials and alpine treatments for tired muscles.

The Ladin valleys themselves are a delight: brightly painted houses, a language all their own, a tradition of wood carving and festive parades. It all feels refreshingly untouched by mass tourism. And with a single ski pass opening up some 1,200 kilometres of slopes, you could ski for a fortnight and never repeat yourself. Our instructor, Marco of Ski School Corvara, was the perfect mountain companion, polishing our technique and pushing us to get better while making sure we never stopped having fun.

We hadn't come to escape. We had come to remember how to be joyful.

Looking back, the week was a kaleidoscope: fresh powder, long dinners, quiet nights under the stars. It was so much more than a ski holiday. The Dolomites gave us the sunlight, the Sassongher gave us somewhere glorious to come home to, and between them, we found our joy again.

Photographs courtesy of the Sassongher and La Majun.