Ski lifts at Zambla and the Alpe Arera: what is there today

The agreement approved by the town council on 17 October 2024 lists precisely what there is: the alpine ski run and the cross-country track in their usable and approved sections, the snowmaking system with cooling towers, pumps and four low-pressure snow guns, the water reservoir, the Gambacotta–Fornace drag lift tested on 28 March 2002 with 63 tows, the piste-basher garage with workshop, a wooden ticket office, two piste bashers and two snowmobiles. The two municipalities have owned the slope since 1999, when they bought it from the company Foppabella.

In 2025 the magic carpet for the ski-school area was added. It had arrived on a free trial for the Christmas holidays of 2024; then the municipality bought it with BIM funds, for about 45 thousand euros for the mechanical and electrical parts, with completion certified in March 2025 and a Stop & Go sensor added in December 2025. The snowmaking really works: for the 2025-26 season the municipality paid Uniacque 2,516 euros for the water used for snow in the Conca, an amount repaid by the operator.

The operator is the Sci Club Valserina, an amateur sports association based in Oltre il Colle and affiliated to FISI, the Italian winter sports federation. The 2024-26 agreement entrusted it with slopes, drag lift, snowmaking system and vehicles, with an annual contribution of 10 thousand euros from each municipality and the obligation to groom the slopes, appoint a slope manager and a person in charge of snowmaking, and switch on the snow guns to have the slopes ready for the Sant'Ambrogio long weekend if natural snow is lacking. The resolution allowed for an extension.

The ski club announced its latest openings on its Facebook page, as Prima Bergamo reported in November 2025; the sciclubvalserina.it website, checked on 1 October 2026, does not respond. For information on the slopes VisitBrembo gives the Scuola Sci Oltre il Colle as the contact, on 350 1230498.

Zambla Alta has a second, very small lift. OpenStreetMap maps a button lift with an easy run next to the Albergo Ristorante Neve, on via Fezzoli; dovesciare.it describes it as the restaurant's ski lift, run by the owners as a service for customers, with a run of about 200 metres and a 50-metre magic carpet for the ski-school area. The Scuola Sci Oltre il Colle still lists the Costa Nebel of Zambla Alta among its downhill slopes.

Its current status, however, is not documented: in December 2022 L'Eco di Bergamo wrote that at Zambla Alta the ski-school area was open but the drag lift closed, and since then we have found no verifiable news of a reopening. For beginner children the documented ski-school area is the one in the Conca dell'Alben, with the magic carpet.

The lifts on the south side of the Arera started from Plassa. Mountain Wilderness's census of abandoned lifts, updated to November 2007, records two chairlifts and two drag lifts on south-facing meadows between 1,400 and 2,000 metres, owned by a private company and decommissioned in 2003 after a landslide, because of declining snowfall, the death of the owner and the age of the lifts. L'Eco di Bergamo of 9 October 2012, on the other hand, recalls a drag lift running until the 1990s: the sources disagree on the closing date.

In October 2012 the municipality removed the last three metal pylons of the Arera drag lift and six pylons of an old lift in the Conca dell'Alben, closed since 1988. On that occasion the then mayor, senator Valerio Carrara, floated the idea of turning the top station of the first chairlift, at 1,600 metres, into a hut and building a summer chairlift up to the Capanna 2000, a project that does not appear to have been carried out. In 2018 Prima Bergamo still described the frames of the old chairlift along the climb to the Capanna 2000.

On 17 June 2026 the town council approved a planning variant dedicated to the Conca dell'Alben, within a joint project with Serina funded under Regione Lombardia's Inner Areas Strategy. The former hotel in the Conca, which contains asbestos materials and is described as completely abandoned, will be replaced by much smaller service spaces: bar, refreshments, information point, toilets, changing rooms and rooms for municipal activities. For the works the municipality has asked the BIM consortium for a loan of 150 thousand euros.

The 2024 agreement still assigned the ground floor of the former hotel to refreshments, first aid, ski hire and storage: with the building in this condition, do not count on services there. Other projects remain on paper: the bid submitted with Serina in 2024 for two new snow guns and the feasibility study for a roller-ski track on Monte Alben approved in 2023.

Anyone skiing on the Conca downhill run must have third-party liability insurance, compulsory since 1 January 2022 under Legislative Decree 40/2021, as the SAT points out. The Scuola Sci Oltre il Colle requires a helmet for all pupils, citing the legal obligation. Off the slopes, towards the Alben, the rules of ski touring apply: the ARPA bulletin for zone 61 Prealpi Bergamasche and a transceiver, shovel and probe kit.