 Poster: A snowHead
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| 8611 wrote: |
Also think there is a glacier somewhere near there (Dachstein or Schmlading?) as was looking in and around that area previously
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Unfortunately the Dachstein glacier shut for downhill skiing about 3 or 4 years ago. Still open for cross country, tourism, and the start of a couple of ski tour routes.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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| abc wrote: |
Both @drporat and @Mother hucker are right, in different years. 
Easter can be powder fest or slush fest. All depends on that particular week on that particular year. The reason people ask for “snow sure” is because they need to book well in advance, without knowing what the weather will be like. Yes, high altitude resorts have a better chance of having good snow. It’s more “snow sure”.
@boardiac, if you could wait till say, February, you will have a better idea of what the snowpack is going to be like in April. Austrian Alps is better known for good snowpack preservation thanks to its more inland location. So if there’s good amount of snow by February, chances are good there will be plenty of snow to slide on in early April. |
Exactly this.
For most of us, this is Pavlovian conditioning.
You reach a good ski resort in the beginning/middle of the season and it is awesome of course.
Remembering how fun it was you choose to return some April, knowing it is high enough but you get disappointed. Probably you won't return there that late but it may well be a particular warm week as previously mentioned.
So you choose to go higher, somewhere you can reach 3000 m altitude with enough pistes. Most chances are it will be better and it will become your chosen destination for April each year - EOSB 
If one year it will be less than ideal due to a warm week, you won't pay attention knowing how good it previously was.
After all, it's "snow sure"
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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Bad Gastein is relatively high for the region snd Easter is early. It is pretty snow sure first week of April, and likely 80%+ open, normally virtually all open.
Some runs will get soft in the afternoon. And on a warm day you may want to catch the free bus up to Sport Gastein for top quality snow. The easy blue at the top makes for good lapping, the steep black at the bottom a challenge (the red to the bottom was closed last April when I was there).
The town is compact and lively, without being raucous. There is a big choice of skiing, a decent sized area, more skiing on the same pass a free bus ride away. Queues are small or non-existent (except perhaps the gondola up from town at morning ski-school time. Pistes fan out, so are mainly relatively quiet. So what's the downside?
Frankly it's not a cruise the blues resort. It has an excellent network of reds, but not that many blues. The gondola up, then another back down to mid-station opens up more blues, but not many tbh. If you want to push intermediates into getting happy on reds, all well and good. But those wanting blues only will find less choice.
Highlight of the area is H1 into H2 from Höhe Scharte down to Bad Hofgastein, especially if yo can hit it early morning.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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| drporat wrote: |
| abc wrote: |
Both @drporat and @Mother hucker are right, in different years.
Easter can be powder fest or slush fest. All depends on that particular week on that particular year. The reason people ask for “snow sure” is because they need to book well in advance, without knowing what the weather will be like. Yes, high altitude resorts have a better chance of having good snow. It’s more “snow sure”.
@boardiac, if you could wait till say, February, you will have a better idea of what the snowpack is going to be like in April. Austrian Alps is better known for good snowpack preservation thanks to its more inland location. So if there’s good amount of snow by February, chances are good there will be plenty of snow to slide on in early April. |
Exactly this.
For most of us, this is Pavlovian conditioning.
You reach a good ski resort in the beginning/middle of the season and it is awesome of course.
Remembering how fun it was you choose to return some April, knowing it is high enough but you get disappointed. Probably you won't return there that late but it may well be a particular warm week as previously mentioned.
So you choose to go higher, somewhere you can reach 3000 m altitude with enough pistes. Most chances are it will be better and it will become your chosen destination for April each year - EOSB
If one year it will be less than ideal due to a warm week, you won't pay attention knowing how good it previously was.
After all, it's "snow sure" |
I had to google to find what “Pavlovian conditioning” is. I don’t think that applies here. At best, it maybe operational conditioning. But even that may be a stretch.
The trouble is, weather does not follow Newtonian physics like the sun rises at x hours and y minutes tomorrow morning. Weather for April fluctuates between slush and ice. So just because you get good weather two years in a row doesn’t mean you’ll get the same the next. So, using one’s own sporadic “past experience” as a guide is a fool’s game. Most of us don’t live long enough to accumulate enough statistics to form a distribution. Not to mention few people understand statistical distributions when making a guess.
Sorry for getting on the soapbox. I’m currently taking a Probability & Statistic course. We got example after example of how the “intuitive” answer being the wrong one. And more importantly, HOW it would go wrong for those who didn’t fully understand probability/statistics. The scariest part? Many of those “wrong intuition” examples are from the healthcare field. We’re talking about doctors here… 
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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Not a million miles away from Bad Gastein is Zell am See/Kaprun. If the season is a warm one you then have the Kitzsteinhorn galcier just up the road, so the high altitude option has you covered.
Last winter March was pretty warm and the lower pistes were poor. The resorts held on grimly until Easter, but had that been earlier (like this season will be a bit) I reckon they wouldn't have been open by that week in April. Then perversely winter arrived in April and there was snowfall after snowfall up high, and the Kitzsteinhorn was the best it had been all season (plus relatively quiet nd of the season).
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