Least affected resort

A snowHead

I'm sick of all the doom and gllom and the public perception which is largely based on the popular presses desire for headlines. Therefore, here's a thread to counteract the other one!

I vote for LDA. Hardly affected at all by the lack of low snow (NOT LACK OF SNOW PLEASE NOTE), but badly affected by the press reports. rolling eyes

A snowHead

easiski, On the contrary. I had presumed that LDA had the best sking in the Alpes due to the large numbers of folks on the ground that have told us this.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

easiski, Good thread, good post Very Happy

In fairness I'd have to propose Tignes as another resort which has been skiing well since Christmas, and from Stewart Woodward's posts continues to do so. snowHead

Hear things have been pretty good in Scotland too! snowHead

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AxsMan, Exactly - we should ban Lisach, Carled and Stanton from posting here on this thread. Lets keep it positive - thanks guys.

Frosty the Snowman, See AxsMan,'s post. I'm sure Snowangel will be along and many others - I want to pass on the message - IT MAY NOT BE A GREAT YEAR, BUT IT'S NOWHERE NEAR AS BAD AS THE PRESS IS SAYING - they have another agenda completely!!! Twisted Evil

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I would suggest La Plagne where low level resort village such as Montalbert 1350 which have been open and skiable consistently since first day of the season (December 16th.)

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cham was plenty fine last weekend and a few days either side.. visibilty was poor on a lot of the days but the snow was fine.. runs down to the resort where a bit slushy and stoney some days but nothing unnegotiable.. saturday i managed to get in the fist car up grand montet for 3 days.. had probably some of the best condotions i have ever experienced, and some of the best scenery.. i also had some fantasticallt icey stuff to contend with firther down and saw 2 of my mates have some really rather good stacks.. a load of snow fell last tuesday as well..

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Val Thorens - Europe's highest resort, so nearly always the most snow-sure.

After all it is free

A second vote for tignes, we were there two years ago and the snow is better this season for sure!

stephen buck, the resort may be the highest, but the skiing isn't! Quite a few places with higher skiing. Very Happy

Getting some good suggestions in - goodeee

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Snowdepths in LDA are still roughly 40% below the longterm average. Many resort runs have been poor, for weeks on end.

Snowdepths in Tignes are roughly 20% below the longterm average. It has fared better than most.

Snowdepths in ValTho are about normal down low, but roughly 30% below-average up top. It has fared better than most, overall.

Snowdepths in La Plagne are about normal down low, but roughly 30% below-average up top. It has fared better than most, overall.

Snowdepths in Chamonix are about 10% above-average up top, but about 30% below-average down low.

Overall, the best snow conditions, for the Nov - Jan holiday season so far, have been in parts of Southwest Switzerland.

Zermatt currently has snowdepths about 10% above the longterm average.

Saas Fee has snowdepths about 20% below-average.

Picking one from the above list -- the winner has to be Zermatt. It has fared better than almost all other mainstream resorts this season.

The runnerup is Tignes.

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Am I wrong in saying as far as on piste is concerned The actual snow depth doesn't matter as long it covers everything and therefore 50cms cover may be fine even if the norm is 75.

brian

Having been to Tignes (came back a week ago now boo hoo) I'd agree with nbt, that conditions were far better than OK and whilst I wasn't there two years ago I've skiied a lot worse conditions there in other January's. Looking forward to my next holiday now 4 and a bit weeks....

You know it makes sense.

Whan talking about snow depths being 40% down on average or 30% down on average - people PLEASE remember that the "AVERAGE" is the mean of a load of numbers - low ones and high ones and middling ones. It seems that people often think that the "AVERAGE" snow depth is what is NORMAL, and that anything BELOW or ABOVE the AVERAGE is NOT NORMAL. This isn't the case - any snow depth that falls somewhere within the range of values used to obtain the mean (provided the mean is based on enough values over the years since snow began) is cool.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

Oi! stop tarring me with the Stanton and (to a far lesser extent - one post if I recall?) Lisach brush please! (Whitegold deserves lumping in with Stanton, mind...)

I'm in the cold corner and I'm fed up with being told I'm a flipping doom monger! Go on, I challenge you, find a doom monger post by me... use the search facility, easy to find my posts...

A snowHead

And a vote for Serre Chevalier. I only have 5 days and 1 easter week remaining-(we can all pimp , Brian wink

).

Easiski, we'll be coming over in March, and may well stop off on the way.

A snowHead

Yes, have to agree with carled, he's not a doom monger, was the first to see the signs of last Tuesday's dump, and tell us about it in suitably careful terms. Brian, too. It's unwarranted extrapolation which is the problem (e.g. Christmas week poor, so the season is a write off). Given our low altitude we've had reasonable skiing here, overall, with some great bits in patches. Like yesterday and today - warm and sunny and pistes in excellent shape, with some of the lower and busier bits well served by the cold weather and snow cannons throughout the last few cold days. The powder lasted well, too, because of the cold. No crowds, chairlift to myself with my snowboard yesterday (absolutely essential, can only get off standing up if I have the whole ramp to myself!) Jolly warm yesterday and today though.... snow cover suffering again.

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Definate 2nd vote for LDA from me. If its looking good in March may go back there again !!

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I haven't been following the weather forecast threads closely, but they are what they are. If people choose to interpret them as meaning the season is over before it has begun or that weeks of perfect skiing conditions are just around the corner, that's up to them, we can all see the met info if we want to and make up our own minds.

There is a natural split between those who live or spend a lot of time in the mountains and can therefore take full advantage of whatever decent snow there is and those who ski one or two weeks a year and are bricking it that all their skiing this year will be in crap conditions. It is understandable if those in the second group get a bit despondent.

Personally, I have every confidence that St Anton will be enjoying several feet of powder under blue skies for the week of 18th Feb and that the w/e of 9th March will see a continuation of Kitzbuhel's revived fortunes.

The OL seems to have picked a good couple of days to be in Flaine, which is obviously intensely annoying, but can't be helped.

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This has sort of been alluded to already but snow depth is only a very broad (vague?) indicator of actual skiing quality around a resort... often it only indicates the depth in a certain single place in the resort rather than an average across the area.
Factors like aspect, shading from the sun by trees/mountain, protection from the wind, skiier traffic/density, steepness all mean that snow depth on individual resort runs will differ hugely from run to run.
Sorry if this is obvious to most but it seemed worth stating in this thread! Puzzled

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After all it is free

I've skied Tignes, Val d'Isere and Les Arcs every few weeks since the pre-season in November. Always been plenty of on-piste skiing available with at least 80% of the domains open, and a couple of times some off-piste as well. Conditions below 1800m have been very marginal, but above that mostly OK and occasionally good. I've skied as much this season up until now as I've done in previous years when the popular perception was much better snow conditions. Obviously it's not a good start to the season, and for lower resorts some have had next to no snow so far. But for the higher resorts, certainly those in France which attract a large number of Brit skiers, the tales of doom and gloom have not been a reality on the ground (or on the snow as the case actually is Wink

).

Thanks pam w, your quote:

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carled, In that case I apologise, you seemed to be on the doom threads a lot. Yes - I agree - Whitegold, GO AWAY AND POST ON THE OTHER THREAD. snowdepths on the piste are almost irrelevant as far as skiing's concerned as long as there's enough. 40% down on VERAGE? I'd say high piste conditions have been consistently better than last year early in the season.

richmond, No - there's been a lot of VERY unrealistic reporting in the press. They've (the french as well), concentrated on the low resorts with little or no snow, and have almost NEVER mentioned that there has been skiable snow at altitudes above 2000m all season. I do understand your point about your few days a year etc. but those of us on the ground are actually reporting what's here - not what we wish, or do you also, not believe the photos??? Crying or Very sad

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snow reports

Cairngorm ?

I have to say that reading the snowreports doesn't give a full picture of what conditions are actually like on the ground. I expected L2A to be a bit of a washout this year, and although it wasn't classic tell everyone about it conditions like it was in Whistler, in no way could it be called bad. Skiing back down to resort isn't the be all and end all, especially with modern lift systems, and it didn't take much to find snow of a reasonable quality, or much more to find good quality piste skiing.

I learnt to ski in the early eighties, for at least two of my school trips in early January, we were unable to ski down to resort, in Crans Montana, and Zell am See.

You know it makes sense.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

Snow depth in Snowmass was very good. Wink

A snowHead

richmond, Paul McK's just been there, had a really good time and reckons that it must be "awesome" in good conditions because it was pretty good in relatively poor conditions - now it's snowing buckets in Austria isn't it?

Kramer, "I expected L2A to be a bit of a washout this year," Why?

A snowHead

easiski, from the SCGB snow reports, and my experience in Meribel last Christmas. It was only reading your reports that made me feel better. Very Happy

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Kramer, Ah. SCGB hates LDA cos we don't have reps - at least that's the way it seems. Not the fault of the resort, but of the ESF union following an accident to someone when being led by SCGB rep. Sad

Whitegold, You never seem to post anything but negatives. This thread was expressly started to give peeps positives to look at. You immediately joined in with negatives - there's a thread for negatives just started which should suit you nicely. Twisted Evil

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easiski, they don't like Serre Che much either, although the reports are supposedly from the tourist office. Not sure why there are no reps in Serre Che though.

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Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...

After all it is free

Mattmulkeen, that is a very good point you make. I do try to emphasize the positive in my analysis of the weather charts and only like to temper the enthusiasm of people a bit when they appear to be getting too excited about a silly forecast from snow-forecast or metcheck. This can come across as being negative if my tone is misinterpreted (as it has been on here on occasion!) but please believe me when I tell you I would be the happiest bunny on earth if it started snowing in the UK & Europe in October and stayed blanketed in the stuff until April. I adore snow, I'm just a complete kid at heart, but I know what it's like to go to a resort with (false) hope of fantastic conditions only to be cruelly spurned by the weather gods, so where I spot a forecast or post on here that I think is a bit over the top, I do try to (gently, if it merits it!) put forward the realistic (not pessimistic) side to things. Reading your post, however, has made me realise that I need to be a bit more thoughtful, so thanks for opening my eyes - I will endeavour to be more careful in future!

I believe that whitegold and stanton probably think they are doing a similar thing to me, but they err on the side of pessimism in my view (probably only down to disappointment in the conditions themselves, to be honest). They can both sometimes appear to revel in being the bearers of bad news and I think it's that attitude that leads to the ill feeling on here, rather than what they actually say. Maybe they can also take something from your post... snowHead

easiski, Present and correct!

We certainly aren't having a NO SNOW year. There is still off piste to ride and the pistes are in very very good condition. 110cm at the top, 25cm at the bottom. I remember 2 years ago we had 50 at the top and 5 at the bottom and the resort was still open and we could still ride to resort.

We never lost our base into resort. Something that if you do believe the press isn't possible if there is NO SNOW

so i say. WE GOT MORE THAN ENOUGH SNOW!!! stop ya b*tching and moaning get your ski's on and lets shredd!!!

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Whitegold, have you been out to any of these resorts your quoting????
if so i take this back, but

SHUT UP SPREADING DOOM AND GLOOM

you dont need much coverage to have a damm good time if your prepared to have one!

i just wish i wasn't sick so i could ride as its just gorgeous up there at the mo

Help!!

Least affected resort

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