Lyngen Alps·Norway
Photo: Jordi Costa Tomé · Pexels
The Lyngen Alps rise straight out of the fjords of Arctic Norway, and the classic way to ski them is from the water. You live aboard a yacht moored in a fjord, step off onto the shoreline each morning, skin up a couple of thousand metres of untracked snow, and ski all the way back down to the sea — where the boat has repositioned and lunch is waiting.
It is the single most extravagant-feeling trip on this list, and split across a group it costs less than you'd think. In April the daylight lasts until nine in the evening, the aurora sometimes still shows at night, and the mix of steep Arctic descents and slow travel by boat between them is genuinely unlike anything else in skiing.
This is committing off-piste terrain: operators require touring experience and avalanche gear, and a guide is standard and effectively mandatory. Come able to ski steep snow confidently, and let the weather set the programme.
In season: Mar–May
Operators require touring experience and avalanche gear; guides are standard and effectively mandatory.
Ski touringJapan
A week timed to Siberian storms that drop fifteen metres of the lightest snow on earth over a season.
Ski touringNorway
Eight days skiing and sailing in the high Arctic, where the rifle in the guide's bag is not decoration.
Ski touringJapan
Three days climbing Hokkaido's perfect volcanic cone on skins, then dropping into the crater itself.
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