Life on The Milky Way

The bread board stocked with prosciutto, cheese and bread arrived without asking. The courtesy nod to the waitress is all that’s needed to acknowledge the platter of savoury treats to finish off a good afternoon’s skiing. It goes down well with the beer.

Behind me a baby is pulling pints at the bar. Or at least it seemed so at first glance. In reality the nappy-clad adventurer is supported by his father whose hands clasp around his waist as he handles the brass taps and smiles with glee.

I had come to Sauze d’Oulx on a bargain hunt and had inadvertently entered a family reunion. In The Snow had sent me to the Italian Alps to check out whether Italy really is the epicentre for a cheap ski holiday.

Italian ski resorts of the Via Lattea (which translate as The Milky Way) have featured prominently in the Post Office’s annual guide to best value ski resorts for a number of years. In the latest edition Bardonecchia, just down the road, came top, at £601 per person for a week (in 2024 it was £543.82). Sauze was placed fifth, with a cost of £731.80 (£663.78 in 2024) for the cost of a six-day ski pass, ski/boot hire, plus ski school, a range of drinks and lunch on the slopes. The prices are a far cry from Val d’Isere’s £1,313.14 per person, or Zermatt’s £1,345.76.

I chose the larger resort and better connected resort of Sauze as our base for a short trip, with Bardonecchia penned in for a day trip.

The question on my mind was, “are the resorts actually any good?” The idea of ‘value’ can be misleading. It’s no good finding Europe’s cheapest mountain-side espresso if the skiing itself is poor or the resort has one button-lift.

My own trip wouldn’t completely mirror the Post Office’s report, which doesn’t include flight costs, but did include ski lessons within its costs. I switched the two over as broadly equivalent in price for our comparison cost per-person. February half-term, typically ground-zero for sky-high priced ski holidays and was chosen as our time to visit to make sure the visit was artificially cheaper due to off-season discounts. The two key issues to tackle first were flights and accommodation.

Having waited until just after the new year’s eve to book, it was feared that our options would be limited, but as it happened flights to Turin were relatively cheap. Return flights including baggage totalled £180 each.

Accommodation was similarly a reasonable price. Scouring Airbnb, I found an apartment that could comfortably fit a family of four, (or at a real squeeze seven individuals) for £533 for four nights – which worked out at £33.31 per person, per night for a family of four.

The apartment was a short walk out of town which when looking at the maps seems to be an issue, but Sauze is relatively compact and the apartment had the added bonus of being close to the Joveneaux lift, which was almost always empty and took us up to the main Sportina area.

The inspiring “Sicily by Car” was to be our rental of choice and despite a short wait, we got the keys and were on the road. A one-week rental cost around £100. Travel from Turin to the Oulx valley is relatively fast and simple, especially if you avoid Turin during rush hour. The tolls do add up though. We spent around £40 to cover both ways.

I had previously skied Sauze d’Oulx in 2010 when the region was hit by a ‘once in a decade’ level of snow. What had worried me was whether my previous experience was a one-off. Mid-February 2025 proved to be fine. Neither lacking in snow or a powder heavy, however, the price was very much worth it. Recent snow reports for this December show that the region has been inundated with fresh snow.

Like the Three Valleys or the Portes de Soleil, the piste map of the Via Lattea can look like a smorgasbord of options, leaving you confused as to where to start. Taking the simple approach for the first day we headed high, up towards the 2,507m high Mt Triplex for a few runs before dropping down into Sansicario and Sestriere.

The snow on the Sauze side was decent, if slightly hard-packed at times, but nothing you wouldn’t expect in the French equivalent of Tignes or Les Arcs. Sestriere on the other hand had a recent dusting and was that little bit more forgiving. Piste management seemed to be the order of the day, with small areas closed as pistes were effectively rebuilt in some parts, using the snow bank that had been built up earlier in the season. Despite navigating what seems to be the world’s most convoluted button lift back from Sansicario, it is easy to drop down into the other resorts from the 2,701m Mt Fraiteve.

Ski passes Vialattea are €56.50 per day or three days for €159. Bardonecchia is slightly cheaper, at €49 for the day. What came as a surprise was that if you buy a multi-day Vialattea lift pass it allows people use one of those days to ski in Bardonecchia for free.

With up to 100km of slopes Bardonecchia may not be the largest ski resort in the world, but it certainly entertained us for the day. For a family looking to try skiing for the first time it has a lot to offer, with a gentle slope coming down off the Plan del Sole lift. Coffee came in at €1,30 for a flat white. Beer between €4 and €6 for a grande.

Although prices are already reasonable, what the Italian resorts do well is provide those little extras for free, such as complimentary slices of pizza with Après-ski. It is hard to quantify into a tally, but you feel there isn’t a monetary calculation behind each exchange. Our Italian hosts in Sauze want people to enjoy themselves, and that rubs off.

To keep to a budget there were evenings of pasta and pesto, but we had enough spare to splash out one night, with a meal at Farola restaurant which mixed tapas with Piedmont cuisine and a good choice of red wines, .

It is a cliche but Sauze d’Oulx’s medieval streets really do ooze charm. Being able to purchase a hip flask of grappa at 2,000 metres for €8 is an option I am glad exists, even if we didn’t take the lady up on her kind offer.

Over four days we had skied our hearts out, and were possibly in need of a holiday.

In a bar outside Bristol’s Temple Meads station we totted up the costs. In total, including drinks came to £775 per person. Not quite what the Post Office says, but we could have likely done it cheaper. In the end, the total was very much worth it.

If you are looking for the perfect destination for your next trip, our Resort Guide has everything you need to know. You can check out our award-nominated podcast, The Whiteout (finalist at the Travel Media Awards) available on  Apple | Spotify | Podcasts or search The Whiteout on your chosen podcast directory.

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