Norway Winter Holiday Travel Guide

Skogshorn i Hemsedal, Norge image credit

Norway's popular resort is a go-ahead ski area with a fast, contemporary lift system and wide beginner and intermediate terrain. For people who know, there are also several fantastic and challenging off-piste areas. Lacking on-mountain accommodation hampered the resort for many years - this was solved with the construction of a new mountain village. The resort has also established a good proportion of quad chairs, and has added up an eight-seat chairlift.

Hemsedal is the record holder for the highest lift-served slopes in the country. Yet the highest runs tend to be the easiest ones, while the more challenging black pistes are found in gladed terrain on top of the base area. Most of the skiing is below Hamaren Peak (1,444m) with an engaging, wide-open selection of above-the-treeline slopes, where all standards of skiers will find plenty to enjoy. A separate peak, Rogjin (1,370m), features two runs that only hurtle back toward the base. Nervous skiers should stick to the blue - the red is rather fierce in some areas. The highest skiable peak, Totten (1,497m), is the route to some of Hemsedal's best off-piste, but is itself a great beginner area having gentle skiing rolling down towards mid-mountain.

There is just one mountain restaurant, Fjellkafeen at mid-mountain, plus other two 'kiosks' for snacks and picnics: one is set at the mid-station and the other at the Tinden area. There are two self-service restaurants back at the bottom area, and a good waitress-service restaurant, Skistua. The resort has a big and fairly recently enhanced terrain park featuring three lines: black, red and blue. There are two half-pipes, jumps,  corners, fun boxes, rails, quarter-pipes and a self-timing course.

Most visitors will choose to stay on the mountain to cut down on traveling time from Hemsedal village. The option is just between the Skarsnuten Hotel or the nearby cabins and apartments. There are a few pleasant hotels in Hemsedal itself, particularly the Norlandia Skogstad. The Hemsedal Resort Fjell-Landsby, which is just around 50m from the ski lifts, has 261 rooms, three bars, three restaurants, and its own ski hire shop.

Read more about Skiing Resorts in Norway