Cortina d'Ampezzo or Engelberg: the long lunch or the long descent

Altitude: two low villages, and only one top is on the piste

Engelberg's village sits at 1,000 metres, the lowest of the 15 Swiss resorts we cover, and 224 metres below Cortina's 1,224. Both sit at the bottom of a big hill rather than high up on the snow.

The tops look level, but they are not quite the same thing. Cortina's 3,028 metres is a lift station, and the highest piste we measure there starts at 2,724. Engelberg's 3,004 is where its highest piste starts, 280 metres above Cortina's. From there to the lowest piste we measure, Engelberg's runs fall nearly 2,000 metres. Cortina's fall 1,509. That is what our one line means by big vertical.

Where the snow sits is a different story. Both count as snow sure on our measure, but by different margins. At Cortina, 67 percent of the piste we measure is at or above 1,800 metres, up to the 3,028 metre lift top, with the highest piste at 2,724. At Engelberg it is 53 percent, up to 3,004, so it clears the half way line by little. Nobody can promise snow. What Engelberg does have is a season that runs into May, where Cortina's ends in April.

Size: Cortina has almost twice the piste

We measure 86 kilometres of piste around Cortina and 46 around Engelberg. Only two of the 55 resorts we cover have less than Engelberg, and none of the 15 Swiss ones. Its quoted 70 kilometres is the Titlis alone. Brunni faces it across the valley with no lift between them, and a free ski bus does the joining.

Cortina's skiing is divided too: Tofana above one side of the town, Faloria and Cristallo across the valley, with the ski bus or a car in between. Neither resort hands you one seamless mountain, so call that a draw. On size alone, Cortina is the bigger week by some distance, and the gap is widest at the easy end: almost twice the blue and easier piste, 38 kilometres against Engelberg's 20 of green and blue.

The skiing: Engelberg is steeper, Cortina has more of everything

Our gradients are averages per run segment, while the grade on a piste map is set by a run's steepest pitch, so these figures describe the overall feel of a mountain more than any one descent. On that measure, Engelberg is the steeper mountain. Of its piste, 31 percent is steeper than one in four, the biggest share of the 15 Swiss resorts we cover, against 25 percent at Cortina. Its reds average 24.0 percent, the steepest of those 15 Swiss resorts and well above the Swiss average of 19.9. Cortina's reds average 21.9.

Who each one actually suits

Engelberg suits strong skiers who want to go off piste. Off piste, glacier and freeride are its strengths in our data, its trait is expert, and our read on it is down to earth and snowy. It also suits anyone flying into Zurich who wants a season that lasts into May. It is not where we would send a mixed group with a beginner in it, or anyone who measures a week in kilometres.

Cortina suits almost everyone else. It is a stylish old town as much as a ski resort, where the evening starts with an aperitivo along the Corso Italia and the passeggiata, and lunch in a rifugio can take the afternoon. Couples, families and groups with a non skier are at home here. Beginners have the gentle Socrepes slopes, intermediates have Tofana's long reds, and strong skiers have the women's downhill pistes and the marked itinerary.

The bit nobody tells you

On almost every piste figure in this article, Engelberg comes out as the smaller resort, with less of its piste up high, less black and less marked off piste. And the reason most strong skiers go there is not in any of them.

Engelberg's real draw is its freeride descents, the Laub and the Steintaeli, which appear in none of our piste or itinerary figures. Judging Engelberg on its 46 kilometres undersells it badly. It also means the comparison only works if you will ski that terrain, which is off piste ground. If you will not, the numbers above are the whole story, and they favour Cortina.