A cat-ski adventure in Kosovo

The porter at Zurich’s oversized baggage counter looked from my passport to my boarding pass, and back again. “Are you flying to Kosovo? he said, visibly confused. A Brit with a snowboard bag ignoring the world-class resorts on the doorstep of Zurich to change planes for Pristina was clearly not something he had come across before.

His bewilderment was perhaps unsurprising. For many in Western Europe, Kosovo is still synonymous with the bitter conflict that surrounded its birth as an independent nation. Although the fighting ended more than two decades ago, the images of war crimes and ethnic cleansing of Kosovo Albanians have rightly not been forgotten. A younger generation may know the country through its famous diaspora – pop stars Dua Lipa and Rita Ora, Arsenal’s Granit Xhaka and former Liverpool and Lyon midfielder Xherdan Shaqiri are all native Kosovo – but it’s not really on anyone’s radar as a ski destination.

“Even the locals thought we were crazy when we got here,” says Sebastian Fleiss, co-founder of Lynx Freeride, a new off-piste skiing operation that hopes to change that perception. “They were like ‘what the hell? No one goes to these mountains in the winter.’ But after a first visit to Kosovo in 2011, then a filming trip in 2015, Fleiss, a former Croatian professional snowboarder, had become convinced of the potential of the place. Perhaps more importantly, he had also met one of the few locals who shared this vision.

Universally known as “Super Hamda”, for his ability to ride, ski or fix anything, Hamdi Hisari was a kingpin of the small local ski scene and claims to be the proud owner of the first snowboard in Kosovo. “My brother brought it from Germany in 1992,” he tells me. “When it passed the border, they thought it was an ironing board.” The couple founded Lynx in 2018 and decided to put this young country on the ski map.

After landing late at Adem Jashari Airport in Pristina (named after one of the founders of the Kosovo Liberation Army), my journey over the increasingly difficult roads in the mountains – by taxi, Nissan 4×4 and finally in snowcat – had been completely in the dark. As soon as the sun hit the peaks the next morning, however, it was obvious that Fleiss and Hisari had been inspired to settle here.

The Cursed Mountains, which straddle the borders of Kosovo, Albania and Montenegro, are wild and empty – they are home to brown bears, gray wolves and the endangered Balkan lynx, from which the company draws her name. They are not particularly high, rising to 2,694 meters, but the terrain on offer is extremely varied. To my right, I could see steep high mountain passes descending from Mount Gjeravica, the second highest peak in Kosovo. To my left, the north-facing slopes near the Albanian border offered strips of cliffs and ravines, perfect for snowboarding; below me were soft, sheltered tree runs, where the snow remained soft even days after a dump. Meanwhile, the proximity to the Adriatic means there’s no shortage of snow – “Last year we had around 15 metres, I think,” says Fleiss – making it the perfect spot for the cat ski.

First developed in British Columbia, cat-skiing uses modified tracked snow groomers (also known as piste bashers) to transport skiers to the top of runs, as an alternative to fixed lifts and cable cars. Like its more expensive cousin, heli-skiing, cat-skiing guarantees customers new runs on every descent. Given the abundance of conventional ski lifts and the lack of free space, it never took off in the Alps, but in the less crowded and less tightly controlled mountains of Eastern Europe there are had something of a boom over the past decade. North Macedonia, southeast of Kosovo, is now home to no less than three operators. Turkey is an emerging destination and you can find cat-ski outfits as far east as Georgia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

Lynx Freeride uses a second-hand cat shipped from Italy and another purchased with a €48,000 business development grant from the European Union (which has injected money for Kosovo’s reconstruction since the war). Having two working cats, in addition to a third shell, which Hisari keeps out of the way to cannibalize parts, ensures that their guests will never be stranded.

Our mornings began with a briefing from the guides, as we sipped Turkish coffee with the color and consistency of crude oil. They were an international crew (lead guide Marko Darkov and Dani Mladenovic were from North Macedonia, while their colleague Mikey Reen came from New York, via a guide school in Colorado) and they adhered to the highest safety standards. . The week started with a full avalanche briefing and daily discussions of snow conditions and risks. During other downtimes, they talked to us about transceiver searches, the finer points of probe technique, and had us practice shoveling exercises together.

All of this, however, was delivered lightly, as if the team was determined to do away with the normal guest-guide dynamic and treat guests as friends and equals. While only two guides were needed for our group of 12, more often than not all three came to play.

There had been heavy snowfall the previous week, they said, but a strong wind had crusted the higher slopes. Our group took some longer exploration runs and skied up to the ridge overlooking Albania one day for lunch. But the best of the skiing was on the lower slopes, where the three guides took turns leading us through the trees, jumping off the snow cushions and screaming as we went. In the evening, Fleiss, Hisari and the guides would drop by for after-dinner drinks, often joined by Fabian Lentsch, a Red Bull-sponsored professional skier who stayed with them for a few weeks. With no mobile reception and a patchy internet connection at best, screen time was kept to a minimum and a family-friendly, informal atmosphere quickly developed.

We spent the morning negotiating turns in some of the steepest ravines – exploding in clouds of white smoke

We were staying at the Grand Hotel Gjeravica, a lodge that Lynx rents for the winter season. It might look like something out of a Wes Anderson movie, but no one inside would mistake it for the director’s work. Animal skins adorned the roughly hewn walls, and the lights – powered by a turbine the leader had installed in a nearby stream – occasionally flashed like strobes, before the backup generator kicked in. In one corner, the group of employees playing cards around a smoky table was a quasi-permanent feature. And in the place of honor, just to the left of the prominent Albanian flag, was a wooden plaque commemorating the owner’s service in the Kosovo Liberation Army.

The shaved head, thick neck and overdeveloped trapezius muscles of a gym junkie, Isuf Krasniqi, who always relies on his War name Rrapini, cut an intimidating figure. He showed me photos on his phone from his days in the army – dressed in a black beret and surrounded by grim-faced companions holding Kalashnikovs. One of his comrades in arms had since entered politics, he said; another was on trial for war crimes in The Hague. One evening after a few glasses of Rakia, a schnapps-style fruit brandy, he lifted his shirt to reveal the crumpled patch of scar tissue left by a Serbian bullet.

Yet despite the owner’s checkered past, the welcome at Le Grand Gjeravica was always warm, the beers were cold and the food was excellent. Greek salads and spicy homemade goat cheese, djath dhiewidely represented. Ajvar, the delicious spread made from roasted red peppers that is a staple of Balkan cuisine, was a must, and the chef baked fresh flatbread daily in the tandoor-style oven out back. On our penultimate night, Rrapini took over the kitchen to prepare mish qengji në tavë, a delicious simmered lamb casserole, with meat from its own herd.

That very evening, the snow we had been waiting for all week arrived – falling in thick, heavy flakes that brought our whole party outside with drinks in hand and tongues out. We woke up to find 40cm of fresh powder had fallen and engulfed our breakfast goat cheese in record time. Lentsch, the Red Bull sponsored skier, jumped into the chat and we spent the morning trading turns in some of the steepest ravines – exploding into clouds of white smoke every time we dug in our edges.

If Lynx Freeride’s potential had been evident all week, it was that last day that really hit it. Fleiss and Hisari have big plans, starting with building a “Lynx Village” – a cluster of chalets they would own and manage, allowing them to accommodate more guests in the winter and mountain bikers in the summer. “Seb has this vision to make it the Baldface Lodge of Europe,” Mikey Reen, the American guide, told me at one point (Baldface being a high-end Canadian cat-ski operation that is still oversubscribed despite prices which may exceed £1,000 per day).

Back at Zurich airport, the idea that this corner of Kosovo could ever rival a destination as famous as Baldface would have seemed ludicrous. But having seen the hurdles Fleiss and Hisari have already overcome, I wouldn’t bet against them. As I watched Lynx’s snowcat navigate the deep drifts this past afternoon, it seemed pretty much unstoppable.

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