Why Laax could be Switzerland’s greenest ski town

Wolves and lynx are returning to the mountains around this sustainable ski resort, where solar-powered lifts serve the grand prix runs and snow parks

There’s a sense of healing among the pines and tangled roots. Skulking somewhere in the snowy woodlands is an Alpine ibex, a distinctly Viking-horned goat, once hunted to extinction in Switzerland before being reintroduced a century ago. Hidden in the forest, an endangered black grouse is whistling as it forages for dwarf shrub needles. Fresh fox-print trails wind through stone pine and spruce, though the grey wolf and bat-eared lynx that have begun to return to these mountains are more elusive.

I’m in Laax in Graubünden (70 miles south-east of Zurich), the Swiss Alps’ traditional home of winter sports, but it’s a ski holiday that most people wouldn’t recognise. The down-to-earth resort pitches itself as Switzerland’s most sustainable playground and I’m exploring from on-high on the new Senda dil Dragun (Way of the Dragon) treetop walkway. The raised, mile-long pathway towers 28 metres above the pillowy snow drifts and I keep my eyes peeled, scouting for ghostly predators and their prey. Though there might not be dragons, the woods are home to an ark’s worth of Alpine species, from chamois and mountain hare to marmots and ptarmigan. In the stillness I spy a red deer through a knot of snow-laden pines. The quiet drama is just as nerve-tingling as any black run.