Schilthorn Mürren Ski Review: World's Steepest Aerial Tramway and an Inferno Race Recon

Schilthorn Mürren: World's Steepest Aerial Tramway, James Bond Views, and an Inferno Recon

Getting to Mürren is half the experience. You drive through the Lauterbrunnen Valley, park up at Stechelberg, and then board what is officially the world's steepest aerial tramway to haul yourself up to a car-free village perched on the mountainside. No roads up here. No buses. Just a tram, a cable, and a fairly dramatic elevation change.

I came here a week before competing in the Inferno ski race — one of the oldest and longest amateur downhill races in the world — so this was as much a recon mission as a ski day. I still hadn't received my luggage at this point, so I was in full rental gear, GoPro jammed awkwardly onto a ski pole like some kind of ski tourist art installation. Not ideal.

The Lift System

The headline piece of infrastructure here is the new aerial tramway from Stechelberg up to Mürren, which opened in 2024. It's genuinely impressive — smooth, fast, and it replaces what was a much older system. From Mürren, you can continue up via lifts to Birg, and then the brand new section that opened for winter 2025–26 takes you all the way up to Piz Gloria at the Schilthorn summit, sitting just under 3,000 metres.

The rest of the lift network is a mix of older fixed-grip double chairs and a handful of express lifts. The double chairs have a certain old-school charm — they're not the fastest things on the mountain, but they work, and the terrain they access is solid. The combination of the new high-speed tram with the older infrastructure makes for an interesting blend. Not every resort needs to rip out everything that came before it.

The Terrain

I started my day from Birg and worked outwards from there, exploring the intermediate terrain and getting a feel for the fall lines before hunting down the race course sections. The resort is bigger than it looks on a map — there's decent vertical, a reasonable spread of terrain, and enough variety to keep you moving for a full day without lapping the same run twice.

The steepest black run on the mountain — run 12 — is apparently the steepest black in the whole valley. I took one look at it on day two, decided my legs and my confidence weren't quite in sync yet, and went and skied run 14 instead. No shame in that. Run 14 was perfectly enjoyable, and living to ski another day has always been my philosophy. I did eventually get around to the Inferno race course sections, which are steep, sustained, and genuinely challenging. If you're not used to longer fall-line skiing, they'll sort you out quickly.

Over at the Winteregg end of the resort there are some pleasant forest runs that provide a nice change of pace — good for when you've been hammering steep terrain and your legs start issuing formal complaints.

Piz Gloria and the Views

At the top of the Schilthorn sits Piz Gloria — a revolving restaurant that was used as a filming location for the 1969 James Bond film On Her Majesty's Secret Service. The Swiss have leaned into this hard, and there's a fair amount of Bond memorabilia up there if that's your thing.

But honestly, the Bond stuff is secondary to the actual view. From Piz Gloria, you're looking straight at the Eiger, the Mönch, and the Jungfrau — three of the most recognisable peaks in the Alps, lined up right in front of you. It's the kind of panorama that makes it difficult to focus on skiing because you keep stopping to stare at things. A coffee up here will set you back around 6.50 Swiss Francs — roughly $12 Australian — but it does come with arguably the best view in the Bernese Oberland, so the value calculation is debatable.

The village of Mürren itself is exactly what you'd hope for — compact, quiet, car-free, and very Swiss. I ducked in to grab a helmet GoPro mount mid-day (my pole setup was making skiing significantly more difficult than it needed to be), and the village has just enough in the way of services without feeling like a theme park.

The Verdict

Schilthorn Mürren is a resort that rewards the effort of getting there. The new aerial tramway makes access significantly easier than it once was, and the completion of the Birg to Piz Gloria lift section for winter 2025–26 opens up the full mountain properly for the first time in winter. The terrain is solid, the views are genuinely exceptional, and the Inferno race course sections are a proper challenge for anyone who fancies themselves a competent intermediate to advanced skier.

It's not a resort that'll suit everyone — the older lift infrastructure means some waiting around at certain points, and if you need a massive interconnected ski area, this isn't it. But if you want character, serious vertical, iconic views, and a resort that doesn't feel like it was designed by a marketing committee, Schilthorn Mürren is well worth the trip.

After two days here, I jumped back in the car, drove through the Grand St. Bernard Pass tunnel — a 21-kilometre dead-straight bore through the Alps — crossed into Italy, and headed down to Aosta for the night. First pizza in Italy was €8 and it was excellent. Switzerland is beautiful, but Italy's cost of living is a welcome adjustment.

Up next: Pila ski resort in the Aosta Valley.