Laax

Overview

Laax is the resort that decided, sometime in the 1990s, that it would rather be the best snowboard and freestyle destination in Europe than another pretty Swiss village with a church spire, and it has spent thirty years and a great deal of money proving the point. The ski area, marketed simply as LAAX, spreads across the three Graubünden villages of Flims, Laax and Falera on a sunny terrace above the young Rhine, an hour and three-quarters from Zurich airport. Its numbers are big by any measure: 216 kilometres of pistes, 30 lifts, a vertical of 1,918 metres from the valley stations at 1,100 metres to the Vorab glacier at 3,018 metres, and about seventy percent of the terrain above 2,000 metres. Its reputation, though, rests on five snowparks, two halfpipes including the 220-metre superpipe the resort calls The Beast, an indoor Freestyle Academy at the bottom of the gondola, and the LAAX OPEN, a World Cup halfpipe and slopestyle event every January that draws the sport's biggest names. The World Ski Awards have named it the world's best freestyle resort nine years running.

The centre of gravity is Laax Murschetg, the purpose-built base at the bottom of the main gondola a couple of kilometres above Laax village proper. This is where the rocksresort stands, eight cube-shaped apartment blocks clad in Vals quartzite and arranged like fallen boulders in a nod to the prehistoric Flims landslide, along with the Riders Hotel, the Freestyle Academy, the rental shops and most of the bars. From Murschetg the gondola climbs to Crap Sogn Gion at 2,252 metres, the hub of the whole area and home to the GALAAXY station complex, a retro-futurist restaurant and hostel where the parks begin. Flims, the older and larger village, has its own gondola, the on-demand FlemX, and Falera is the small, quiet third base with a chairlift onto the La Siala side. A free bus links the three with the guest card.

The FlemX deserves a paragraph, because nothing like it exists anywhere else. Built by the local lift maker Bartholet for the Weisse Arena Group at a cost of around CHF 80 million, it is a ten-seat gondola that runs on demand rather than continuously: you call a cabin at one of six stations, choose your destination and travel without stopping at the stations in between, which the operator says saves up to half the energy of a conventional lift. It opened in stages from December 2023 and the final section to Ils Cugns below Cassons, at 2,500 metres, opened in December 2025, restoring lift access to the Cassons plateau after more than a decade without it. The run from Flims to the top takes 24 minutes.

Terrain & Snow

For all the freestyle branding, most of Laax is ordinary, excellent Alpine skiing on wide, open, mostly treeless slopes with a lot of sun. The terrain split that third-party guides quote is roughly forty percent beginner, thirty-five intermediate, twenty advanced and five expert, and the shape of the mountain bears that out: huge, gently rolling upper bowls around Crap Sogn Gion, Nagens and La Siala, steeper reds dropping off Crap Masegn at 2,477 metres, and long, long descents home. The Vorab glacier, reached by a new eight-seat gondola from Crap Masegn that replaced a 1978 lift for the 2025/26 season, is the high point and the reason the season starts reliably in late November; the Vorab restaurant at 2,570 metres is the highest in the area. The longest descent, from the glacier all the way down to Flims, is quoted at around 14 kilometres and close to 1,900 vertical metres, one of the longest lift-served runs in Switzerland.

The parks are laid out in a progression between Crap Sogn Gion and Alp Dado. Snowpark Beginner and the new wave-and-pump-track style Whoop De Doo are for first jumps, Ils Plauns is the medium park, the kilometre-long P60 carries the rails, boxes and the Olympic-size Pro Kicker Line of four jumps, and Snowpark NoName holds the superpipe and a minipipe, with Caffè NoName alongside as the freestyle community's living room. The Beast is 220 metres long and 22 metres wide with seven-metre walls, and LAAX bills it as the largest halfpipe in the world. Across the five parks the resort counts more than ninety obstacles. At the base, the rebuilt Freestyle Academy, reopened in August 2024 at about 2,000 square metres, has trampolines, airbags, a skate bowl, a vert ramp and a parkour zone for the days when the weather closes in.

Freeriding is organised rather than wild. Yellow-marked freeride routes are secured by avalanche blasting but left ungroomed, the Freeride Base at Nagens on the Flims side posts conditions and advice, and two new routes down from Cassons to Segnes, 2.8 and 2.2 kilometres long, opened for the 2025/26 season with the completion of the FlemX. The Segnes plateau sits inside the UNESCO Tectonic Arena Sardona, where the older rock of the Glarus thrust lies visibly on top of younger rock, one of the clearest geological sights in the Alps. Snowmaking is modest by Alpine standards, around 37 percent of the pistes according to Skiresort.com's most recent test, but the altitude and the glacier do most of the work, and Laax has run a sustainability programme called Greenstyle since 2010 with the stated aim of becoming the first fossil-free Alpine destination by 2030.

Beginners and Families

Beginners have two good options. Foppa, the first stop on the FlemX above Flims, is a sunny, sheltered learning area with its own restaurant, and the plateau around Crap Sogn Gion is wide enough to take first turns at altitude with a view. Snowpark Beginner and the KIDS Freestyle Academy at the base mean a child who wants to jump can learn to do it safely on airbags before trying snow. Falera is the quietest of the three villages for a family that wants an early night.

When to Go

The 2026/27 season runs from 28 November 2026 to 11 April 2027, with the high-season pricing tier from 18 December to 29 March. The LAAX OPEN falls on 13 to 16 January 2027, which is the loudest week of the year at Murschetg and the best week to see the parks used properly; the resort is quieter and cheaper in the two weeks after it. March brings the Banked Slalom and, in 2027, the finale of Shaun White's Snow League in the halfpipe from 11 to 13 March. Friday night skiing runs on the Curnius to Laax Murschetg run for about CHF 22.

Getting There

Zurich airport is about 150 kilometres away by the A3 and A13 motorways to Reichenau and then the cantonal road up to Flims, which takes an hour and three-quarters to two hours in normal traffic. By public transport, take the train from the airport via Zurich main station to Chur, about an hour and a quarter, then PostBus line 81, which runs every half hour and reaches Flims in around 40 minutes and Laax in just under 50; the whole trip is about two and a half hours. LAAX runs its own airport shuttle from Zurich for around CHF 79 each way in winter, booked at least 48 hours ahead. The Murschetg car park charges about CHF 33 for 24 hours.

Lift Tickets & Pricing

LAAX prices dynamically and publishes its rates only in the online ticket shop, so the exact figure depends on the date and how far ahead you buy. Third-party snapshots of the 2025/26 season put the adult day pass between about CHF 72 and CHF 89, with early-season and advance-purchase dates at the lower end; 2026/27 prices had not been posted at the time of writing. Fixed-price items include a pedestrian day ticket at about CHF 60, night skiing at about CHF 22, and the TOPCARD, a season pass that covers LAAX plus Arosa Lenzerheide and Davos Klosters for around CHF 1,300 in presale. Pedestrians can ride the FlemX for about CHF 25 per section. Check current prices at the official LAAX ticket shop.

Events

The LAAX OPEN is the anchor of the calendar: a FIS Snowboard and Freeski World Cup in halfpipe and slopestyle, held on the P60 and in The Beast at Crap Sogn Gion, with about 250 athletes, a floodlit halfpipe final, rail sessions and concerts at Murschetg, and free access for anyone with a lift ticket. The 2027 edition, the twelfth, is confirmed for 13 to 16 January. The 2026 winners were Scotty James and Gaon Choi in the pipe, Romain Allemand and Kokomo Murase in snowboard slopestyle, and Birk Ruud and Eileen Gu in freeski slopestyle. In March 2027 The Snow League, the halfpipe series founded by Shaun White, brings its second-season championship to the same pipe from 11 to 13 March. The community Banked Slalom LAAX runs in late February or early March, and a KIDS LAAX OPEN gives the next generation a go at the same features.

Where to Stay

The choice is between Laax Murschetg, where you can walk from the room to the gondola and the bars in ski boots, and Flims, the traditional village with the grander hotels and a slightly older crowd, with Falera as the quiet third option. One important note for this winter: the Waldhaus Flims, historically the area's grand hotel, is closed for a CHF 40 million renovation and is not due to reopen until spring 2027, so it is absent from the list below. Prices are indicative winter rates for a double and rise steeply over the LAAX OPEN and school holidays.

Budget (~CHF 120-250/night)

Mid-Range (~CHF 250-450/night)

Luxury (~CHF 250-450+/night)

Dining

Laax eats Graubünden food, which means capuns (chard-wrapped dumplings), maluns (grated potato fried in butter), barley soup and dried meat, alongside the pizza, ramen and burgers you would expect from a resort built for snowboarders. The Weisse Arena Group runs most of the mountain restaurants and many of those at the base, so quality is consistent if not always characterful; the standouts are the independents in the older villages.

On-Mountain

In the Villages

Also worth knowing: GRANDIS Ustria da vin in Flims for antipasti and meat from the open fire, Tegia Curnius in Laax village for maluns and salsiz, and the vegetarian Riders Restaurant at the Riders Hotel. Après runs from the Legna Bar sun terrace at the Flims valley station and the Indy Bar and Camino Bar at rocksresort to the Riders Lobby for live music and Casa Veglia for the late shift.

Plan Your Laax Trip

Laax is the pick for snowboarders and freestyle skiers of every level, for anyone who wants a big, sunny, high ski area within two hours of Zurich, and for design-minded travellers who would rather sleep in a quartzite cube than a chalet. It is not the pick for skiers who want a chocolate-box village with a church square, or for steep-and-deep experts, who will find the freeride limited and the snowfall moderate. Fly to Zurich, take the train to Chur and the PostBus up, stay at Murschetg if you want to be in the middle of it and in Flims if you do not, and ride the FlemX to Cassons at least once just to see how a lift can work when someone starts from scratch.