 Poster: A snowHead
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It's fairly easy to find out how many km of pistes particular resorts have but does anyone know of a website that compares km of pistes to the number of beds in a resort?
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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ben wright, if you want least densely populated, I'd say look at some of the smaller Euro resorts where tour ops don't go.
Also places like Winter Park in Colorado, which is busy at weekends but a lot quieter through the week.
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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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Look at Big Sky. i went in half-term week last year, and didn't see anything remotely approaching a queue all week. Some outlying runs are literally deserted - you can often go for 20 minutes or so without seeing another skier. It's fabulous.
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Jonny Jones, funny, I was thinking of mentioning it too.
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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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Don't think about going to Le Grand Bornand, always massive queues for everything, also very expensive, massive hordes of english holidaymakers, long drive from Geneva etc, terrible place. We have gone for the past couple of years and are booked to go again next year. Looking forward to all that queueing!
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Anecdotal observations are fine, if a little unscientific, but I'm looking for a source of info. that will let me compare length of piste with maximum (ignoring day-trippers) number of people in the resort.
Any ideas?
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ben wright, that could be difficult, because you really need to factor in the uplift capacity of all the lifts as well, and the amount of off-piste that is available.
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I can remember when Val D has 8000 beds - pre Olympics - and a very efficient lift system as a consequence. This is the most over-looked stat for me. Very important...!!!
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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I am not aware of a place where you can find a beds/piste mileage ratio (more's the pity). Where to Ski & 'board does give a star rating for "queues" however - that might be a good place to start if you have that publication.
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ben wright, Wear The Fox Hat and JT have hit on something here. Faster lifts and/or greater uplift capacity can lead to more crowded pistes. All those people who would be queuing for a rubbish lift are clogging up the pistes instead
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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This is interesting... how should crowds be measured? We need something per something, but what are the somethings?
First, the numerator. Beds is flawed, because resorts with high numbers of day trippers will be artificially flattered. Lift passes sold would be better, but again resorts with lots of season ticket holders would be flattered. We probably want the average daily skier count, but only high season should be counted or resorts with long seasons might look better than they really are.
The really difficult one is the denominator. Do you take piste km (problems: resorts with slow, inefficient lift systems; resorts with high proportion of off-piste skiers; resorts with large treeless bowls; resorts with many narrow, low capacity pistes), ski area (repeats many problems of piste km, not generally available in Europe), or uphill lift capacity (what use is a lift that's not operating, or a lift that leads to an overcrowded piste).
I think that daily peak season skiers per acre is probably the best compromise for the matehmatical measures, although I bet it can't be derived for most resorts. But this is really one area where numerical measures are too compromised to be meaningful. A resort could have a great statistical measure but an appalling real world peformance if it has a big bottleneck at one point in a badly designed lift network.
I think you're best to rely on the crude star rating in a guide like 'Where to Ski and Snowboard'. Anyone care to disagree?
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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Jonny Jones, maybe the average number of passes issued per day (along with the maximum and minimum) would be useful, along with uphill capacity per hour. As you say there are any number of factors which can distort an "average per kilometer (or hectare)" figure, but maybe those figures would give people a general idea
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hmmmm,food for thought. Murren has only 2000 beds with 53 kilometeres of piste and i have only once been in a long Q.The reason for that Q was the snow was pretty bad in the region and being the highest out of them (Wengen & Grindelwald) it seemed they all decided to flood Murren.
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You know it makes sense.
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Yes, I would say:
How much time do I spend in lift queues?
How often do I get on a 4 man chair with only one other person (cause there's no queue)?
How many people do I pass on the main slopes (or how many pass me)?
If all those numbers are low, who cares about the number of beds!
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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i can say with absolute certainty that there are always places mid week in January or February at Colorado resorts where you will not see another soul.
after having skiied 1500-2000 feet of vert a five minute wait in a lift line isn't too unwelcome on the weekends.
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Poster: A snowHead
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| Quote: |
| If all those numbers are low, who cares about the number of beds! |
Surely the number of people in a resort is going to be a significant factor in all of those?
Outside of the weekend, I would expect most resorts to have a negligible number of day-trippers so the number of people staying in the resort is going to determine how busy the slopes are. Other considerations (such as queueing times) depend on infrastructure but my original enquiry was about crowded pistes. While lift queues are a pain in the @rse, 5 minutes in a queue is far preferable to any time on a jam-packed piste.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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ben wright, the number of day-trippers can depend on conditions - in some areas (eg around Salt Lake City) if there is a big powder day, many people will take it off work to go skiing (or at least take the morning off)
OK, so it's the number of people you'll meet on the piste.
Here's a couple of pics of a busy day in Winter Park...
The Pioneer Express is crowded
Bradley's Bash - one of the main runs
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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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Here's a nice of of Les Arcs taken on 24 January this year at 11.30am. Even resorts which you might think are busy will have quiet pistes.
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Wear The Fox Hat, i have to recount my first trip to Alta. it was the last two weeks of march several years ago that i got away with my family. i assumed it was going to be a madhouse. i got up early and headed up the canyon. i assumed traffic would be horrendous. pulled into a near empty parking lot at 8:30 a.m. and parked my car five feet from the front door of the main lodge. by the time the lifts opened the "Q" was perhaps twenty deep.
it wasn't a powder day, however, i was still amazed. it was a sunday......
fox, do you have any more WP/MJ photos?
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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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Rusty Guy, just PMd you.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
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I've been to LL/Sunshine for the last few years (usually Jan/Feb) and the slopes are normally quiet. On some days as you ride up the mountain and look down on the slopes you'd not see one person on them.
My brother in law has skied many places in Europe maintains that even on busy days the slopes ar far less crowded than when he has skied in Europe.
Personally I've only skied Canada so quiet slopes ar the norm for me, even so it has surprised me that lift queues don't exist and even if you end up in one they are fasst moving and very civilised, standing on someones skis would be very bad form. Pushing in queues doesn't happen, your likely to get your pass taken off you if you do. Same as skiing fast on slow zones.
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OK, let's play the naked piste game. Here are my entries from Big Sky last year - all taken during UK half term and a few days before President's Day in the US. I didn't choose my moment for these shots - they're genuinely typical. Tha's why I keep singing Big Sky's praises in these forums.
Liberty Bowl
Eldorado
Ambush
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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Jonny Jones, very nice, although I can definitely see people in Photos 1 and 3 
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| Quote: |
| Jonny Jones, very nice, although I can definitely see people in Photos 1 and 3 Wink |
Yeah. I thought that editing my wife out of photo 1 might not be the best way to further wedded bliss. As for photo 3 - that's the resort's main base area. Those guys aren't skiing, they're wondering which deserted lift to go up next.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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Jonny Jones,
outstanding even on a photo!
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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Jonny Jones, oooh, very nice piccies indeed.
ben wright, I'm not sure how this might help... but my understanding is that in France certainly the planning of development of number of beds in resort is now tied to the activities available to guests. Example: if you are in a well developed resort and want to build a new hotel, there has to be adequate spare skiing/swiiming/etc. capacity to allow the number of beds you want.
So. Somewhere there must be some records of what uplift/capacity/etc. there is available to help the planners.
Whether that's at all available or useful is yet another matter.
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You know it makes sense.
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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Quick vote:
I have spent literally months skiing in Kimberley BC over the last years and during the week it is often the case that the slopes are so quiet the piste patrol are happy to close off a piste for me and my mates to race train!!!! At weekends you occasionally have to queue but during the week it is often deserted....the reason seems to be the only tour op. (I mean only - not just from the UK) that goes there is Inghams and that apart from that you are skiing with locals.
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Poster: A snowHead
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| jashcroft wrote: |
| Don't think about going to Le Grand Bornand, always massive queues for everything, also very expensive, massive hordes of english holidaymakers, long drive from Geneva etc, terrible place. We have gone for the past couple of years and are booked to go again next year. Looking forward to all that queueing! |
 ...yes, us too... keep going back there to remind myself just how long a real queue is... and as for the drive...
You don't want to go there. You don't want to sell me death sticks. You're going to go home and re-think your life...
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Just an idea, but as a means of "pure" measurement, what about the electronic card thingees now in use in a lot of resorts??
Any idea whether resorts are configuring them in order to record total daily slope useage? Of course the cards could be configured so that raw data collected included a unique identifier for the user of the card on that day (not just "card 123456", which is used each week by a new user).
At the moment individual users of some electronic pass systems can obtain a read-out of their own mileage logged by the card.
Of course it's anyone's guess whether resort management would ever release similar information about bulk skier numbers....
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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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Ben
You might want to check out our website: www.skihimalaya.com
Apart from there being only two decent hotels (less than 45 rooms b/w them) at the base of a 5 km & 1330 vertical metre gondola, there is very little in the way of an established ski & board community in Gulmarg.
Conditions this winter can - with good reason - be expected to be the closest a resort has ever come to making heli-riding redundant.
You can contact me via the website.
Hope this info is useful!
Kind regards
Peter Robinson
www.skihimalaya.com
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
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Powdercat - fantastic effort in turning around a general enquiry into a plug for your business 
However, I (without turning this into a blatant puff) own and run a chalet in the southern French Alps so won't be able to come out to see you this winter - maybe in the spring when the European season's over.
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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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actually there are several decent hotels in gulmarg, but only 2 on skihimalaya's books. check his website for details.
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FAQ
) and, more importantly, in which lift queue will they be pushing in front of you 
