Search for skiing in the Navarra Pyrenees and most guides slot Navarra into the same category as the rest of the mountain range: snow, peaks, ski resorts, pick one. That framing skips the one fact that actually matters if you are planning a trip. Navarra has never built an alpine ski resort. Both of its ski centers, Larra-Belagua and Irati-Abodi, are nordic facilities built for cross-country skiing, and neither one has ever had a chairlift, a T-bar, or a marked downhill run.
This matters because the two kinds of skiing are not interchangeable. Alpine skiing means a lift carries you up and gravity does the rest of the work down a groomed piste. Cross-country, or nordic, skiing means you generate your own momentum across flatter or gently rolling terrain on skis built for gliding, not carving. A visitor who drives out to the Roncal Valley expecting a lift ticket and a mountain to descend will find a trail network, a ski school for technique, and no lift of any kind. Someone who wants an actual downhill run has to leave Navarra entirely.
This account draws on the government pages of Navarra’s own tourist board, the public company that runs Larra-Belagua, the Valle de Salazar’s own tourism office, and the closing-season reporting from Navarra’s regional press, cross-checked against each other rather than repeated from a single source.
Cross-Country Only: What Nordic Skiing Actually Means Here
Navarra’s tourist board states this plainly: the region has two ski resorts, and both specialize in cross-country skiing. There is no third option hiding somewhere in the Pyrenean valleys. Regional coverage of Navarra and Aragón’s winter sports scene confirms the same thing from the other direction: there are no alpine ski stations with descent pistes in Navarra, and cross-country is the only choice within the region’s own borders.
The reason has less to do with the mountains being too small (though the Navarra Pyrenees are genuinely modest in height compared to the central Pyrenees further east) and more to do with how the region built its winter tourism. Both facilities sit inside protected natural areas. Larra-Belagua occupies a designated nature reserve in the Roncal Valley. Irati-Abodi sits at the edge of the Selva de Irati, already recognized as the second-largest forest in Europe after Germany’s Black Forest. Building lift infrastructure and grading descent runs through either landscape was never the direction Navarra’s regional government or the local valley authorities chose to take. Instead, both centers grew around marked trail networks, ski schools, and equipment rental built specifically for the nordic discipline, plus snowshoeing routes that use the same terrain in winters when the trails aren’t groomed for skiing.
For a visitor, this changes what to pack and what to expect. There’s no need for a lift pass in the alpine sense, though both centers sell day access to their marked trail networks. Ski school here teaches the classic and skating techniques of cross-country movement, not parallel turns. And the elevation gain you’d get from a chairlift, you get instead from walking or gliding it yourself along the trail.
Larra-Belagua: Built by the Valley of Roncal, Not for Downhill
Larra-Belagua sits at the head of the Roncal Valley, in the municipal district of Isaba, inside a protected nature reserve at the border with France. Informal nordic skiing had gone on in the area since the 1970s, with the trails upgraded through the 1980s, but the facility visitors use today is a public infrastructure project. Starting in 1988, the regional government of Navarra worked with the Roncal Valley’s own governing assemblies to plan a permanent center, the final project was agreed in 2005, and the complex was formally inaugurated on 24 January 2008. It is managed today by NICDO, the Navarra public company that also runs the Baluarte auditorium in Pamplona and the city’s planetarium.
The trail network is split across two sectors. El Ferial, the main building, connects roughly 20.7 kilometers of marked nordic trails through the Zampori, Borturko, and Eskilzarra areas, along with equipment rental, a ski school, a bar and restaurant, and marked snowshoeing routes. La Contienda, a smaller second sector, adds close to five kilometers of track rated from very easy to very difficult, aimed more at intermediate and advanced skiers.
The center just closed a record 2025-26 season. Snow held for 141 consecutive days without a closure, and the season drew nearly 24,000 visits, up more than 11 percent on the year before, with the earliest months of the season up over 50 percent on the prior year’s same period. Navarra’s regional government has also run a School Ski Campaign out of Larra-Belagua for more than 40 years, bringing over 160,000 schoolchildren through cross-country instruction here across four decades, one of the longer-running public winter sports programs in the country.
Irati-Abodi: Skiing Inside Europe’s Second-Largest Forest
Navarra’s second nordic center sits in the Salazar Valley, on the site of the old Pikatua customs post along the road from Ochagavía toward the French border, about 13.5 kilometers outside the village. At roughly 1,300 meters of altitude, Irati-Abodi offers four marked cross-country routes: Zerrillar at 4.5 kilometers, Cruz de Osaba at 8, Zamukadoia at 9, and Koixta, the longest and most demanding at 16 kilometers, reaching as far as the Ermita de la Virgen de las Nieves.
Unlike Larra-Belagua, Irati-Abodi is run by the Salazar Valley’s own local government rather than the Navarra regional public company, a reminder that this corner of the Pyrenees still handles its own affairs at the valley level, a pattern with deep roots in Navarra’s history of local self-governance. The center operates daily from 9:00 to 17:00 in season, with equipment rental, a bar-cafeteria and restaurant service, and a large parking area at the trailhead.
What sets Irati-Abodi apart isn’t its trail length, which is modest compared to Larra-Belagua’s network, but its setting. The routes run through the edge of the Selva de Irati, a beech and fir forest that has drawn hikers and naturalists for its scale and density long before anyone laid out a ski trail through it. Skiing here means gliding through the same forest, rather than around it.
Getting There, and Where to Go If You Actually Want a Chairlift
From Pamplona, Larra-Belagua is roughly 100 kilometers by road, about an hour and 20 minutes’ drive into the Roncal Valley. Irati-Abodi is closer, around 80 kilometers and under an hour to Ochagavía, with another short stretch of road to reach the trailhead itself.
For visitors without a car, Larra-Belagua runs a Saturday Skibus during the season, departing Pamplona at 7:30 a.m. from the La Morea shopping center and returning by around 7:00 p.m. The detail that best sums up Navarra’s relationship to downhill skiing is what that same bus does after it drops passengers at El Ferial: it keeps driving, across the border into France, to the alpine resort of Arette-La Pierre Saint-Martin. Navarra’s own nordic center and France’s nearest downhill resort share one bus route, because Navarra’s tourism authority never had its own downhill product to connect the route to.
Anyone who wants an actual chairlift and a marked descent run has to leave Navarra for the neighboring region of Aragón. Candanchú is the closest option, roughly 137 kilometers and an hour and 40 minutes from Pamplona. Formigal-Panticosa, one of the largest alpine ski areas in this part of the Pyrenees, sits about 163 kilometers away, a little over two hours by road. Astún, connected to the town of Jaca, is a third option in the same general direction. All three are day-trip distance from Pamplona, just not from anywhere inside Navarra’s own borders.
Frequently Asked Questions
Are there ski resorts in Navarra?
Yes, two: Larra-Belagua in the Roncal Valley and Irati-Abodi in the Salazar Valley. Both are cross-country (nordic) ski centers with marked trail networks, ski schools, and equipment rental.
Is there downhill or alpine skiing in the Navarra Pyrenees?
No. Navarra has no alpine ski resort with chairlifts or marked descent pistes. Both of its ski facilities are nordic only. The nearest downhill skiing is across the regional border in Aragón or over the French border near Larra-Belagua.
How do you get to Larra-Belagua from Pamplona without a car?
A Saturday Skibus runs during the season, leaving Pamplona at 7:30 a.m. from the La Morea shopping center and returning by evening. Reservations are typically needed by the Friday before departure.
What is the closest downhill ski resort to Pamplona?
Candanchú, in Aragón, is the closest at roughly 137 kilometers and about an hour and 40 minutes by road. Formigal-Panticosa and Astún are the other nearby alpine options, all in Aragón.
Every article on the Encierro blog is authored or reviewed by active bull runners with direct experience in Pamplona.