Best Summer Skiing on the planet...

After this post from Frank on his Mt.Hood experience:

Frankontour":33usri4z said:

What I can say now is that the mountain was just way better than our best expectations !

I seriously thought I would only have the chance to ski the general public line + the lower palmer trail to the Palmer lift.

We had (other than that) :

- skied at least 40 runs down other lines on the Palmer snowfield
- access to 3 other runs to get back to the Palmer Chairlift
- the Magic Mile skiable on East Mile, groomed, adding almost 1000' vertical
- A snowfield and glacier almost just for us
- The huge snowpark canyons at the bottom of the Palmer, (closed but who cares after skiing down the glacier, at 3h PM). One of these canyons was skiable almost to the hotel, with just a short walk of 100' long in the middle part and a 1000' long walk at the bottom.
- Access to the top part of the Magic Mile trails, with a short walk to get back on East Mile.

+ there was no crowd, the skies were blue and the weather was nice, not too warm, not too cold, on 4 of our 5 days out there (the 1st day was in freezing rain, sleet and a bit of snow)

It's sure that I've not skied anything else on the west coast or in the rockies, but especially in august, this was a wonderful trip and for us, Timberline Lodge is quite far to be over-rated. Obviously, this is just our opinion...

Actually, Christophe told me this week that the summer skiing on the mountain was better that any of the numerous glaciers he has skied in this time of the year, in the Alps...

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I've never heard any great things about the Alpe d'Huez, Val d'Isère or Les Deux Alpes glaciers. The people that I know have always mentioned that Tignes had the best summer skiing in France.

Any opinions on where is the best summer skiing on the planet. Southern Hemisphere is pretty obvious, so I'll break this down in two categories with two sub-categories.

1) Best Summer skiing in Northern Hemisphere (after June 21th) :wink:

a) North America:

Blackcomb / Whistler
Timberline / Mt. Hood
Mammoth on record snow years.

b) Europe and others
Les Deux Alpes FR
Tignes FR
Val d'Isère FR
(I believe that Alpe d'Huez, La Plagne, Val Thorens and Courmayeur (IT) have stopped summer skiing)
Zermatt SW
Saas Fee SW
Val Senates IT
Hinterlux AUT
Stryn NOR
Iceland(?)

c) Snowdomes :roll:
Domes in France, Belgium, Spain, Germany, the UK, China and Dubai.

2) Best Summer skiing in Southern Hemisphere (after June 21th) :wink:

a) South America (best known):

Portillo (CH)
El Colorado (CH)
Valle Nevada (CH)
La Parva (CH)
Pucon (CH)
Las Lenas (ARG)
Bariloche (ARG)
Los Penitentes (ARG)
Esquel (ARG)

b) Others (a few)

Whakapapa / Turoa NZ
Cardrona NZ
Treble Cone NZ
The Remarkable NZ
Coronet Peak NZ
Mt. Hutt NZ
Porter Heights NZ
Thredbo AUS
Hotham AUS
Tiffendell RSA :shock:


So any opinions out there????

I've summer skied at Tignes, Blackcomb, Termas de Chillan, Valle Nevado (interconnecting with la Parva & el Colorado), Mt Hutt, Ohau, Treble Cone, The Remarkables, and Coronet Peak.

Blackcomb basically sucks. Midwinter, those T-bars are a yawn. The glacier at the top of la grande motte at Tignes basically sucks. Midwinter, it's an intermediate cruiser. South America has better skiing than New Zealand. In New Zealand, Treble Cone wins hands down though you're better off sampling several ski fields since they're all quite small. I prefer Termas de Chillan over Valle Nevado for several reasons. First, it has some below tree line skiing so you can actually go out on snowy and cloudy days. The Gran Hotel is also much nicer than Valle Nevado. Termas de Chillan has more vertical than Valle Nevado but Valle Nevado with the other 2 interconnected resorts has far more acres. Termas has better out of bounds terrain off the Don Otto double.

Geoff":3qwvvkdk said:

Blackcomb basically sucks. Midwinter, those T-bars are a yawn. The glacier at the top of la grande motte at Tignes basically sucks. Midwinter, it's an intermediate cruiser.

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That's why they are skiable in the summer. Summer skiing glacier aren't steep. Steep glaciers are full of seracs and are rarely part of a ski area.

I definitely agree (not that I know first hand-but heard enough stories from friends) that a normal winter mountain (in the Southern Hemisphere) aren't comparable with want is skiable up on our side of the equator, unless you start talking about small local hills in Australia or elsewhere.

From late spring onwards the answer to this question varies as you go later.

Most North American ski areas close by early May. Of those remaining through Memorial Day Mammoth offers the most lift-served terrain, most steep terrain, best maintenance of groomers and probably terrain parks, and prevailing weather (clear days and freezing nights) most conducive to spring skiing. Mammoth is open to Memorial Day 90+% of the time but to July 4 only 30%.

Mt. Bachelor deserves to be in this discussion due to large acreage and consistent off-piste corn. In May you can say it's close to a tossup based upon your preference for Mammoth's steeps vs. Bachelor's snow. In June the odds favored Bachelor as its snow lasts longer on the average, with its full vertical open to July 4 probably twice as often as Mammoth. Unfortunately Bachelor's new management has withdrawn from the June portion of this competition since 2003.

A-Basin, Sunshine and Snowbird (normal, not 2005) operation in May is of much smaller scale than Mammoth/Bachelor.

Whistler to June 4 has terrain open similar to Mammoth/Bachelor. I strongly suspect in the lower altitude and more marine climate that the snow surface is less consistent. Beyond that point Blackcomb's Horstman Glacier is judged inferior to Timberline based upon what we're seen posted here. And public access to Blackcomb's skiing being restricted before noon is very undesirable.

So once Mammoth closes (average a week or two into June) Timberline remains the best area running lifts. For the earn-your-turns crowd it's not hard to find impressive trip reports on several NW volcanic peaks throughout the summer.

I'm a bit surprised to hear people say that Timberline is better than the Euro glacier skiing, even Tignes, which I got the impression was much larger. But I'm getting the impression that Palmer is steeper than anything on the Grand Motte. However, the steeper stuff is subject to more deterioration as the summer wears on. Patrick will see Timberline near the end, so I'll let him make that call.

The southern hemisphere places are properly judged on winter criteria.

Australia is best compared to southern New England, MASH or possibly Southern California. Definitely not as good as Vermont in a normal year or Mt. Baldy in a good year.

Geoff and I have seen most of the same areas in New Zealand but he's been to more and different ones in South America. I agree on Treble Cone beiing best terrain in NZ. It's useful to see his comments that the what appear to be medium size areas in Chile are still substantially bigger than what's in NZ. Las Lenas is closer to the Alps (Grand Montets is most similar from what I've personally skied) in topography and scale than any of the places I've skied in North America. You do need to factor in the weather/management risks at Las Lenas and to a lesser degree elsewhere in South America.

NZ management is of course better, but unfortunately the areas are poorly located in terms of natural snowfall. Given time and $ involved any southern destination should be visited only in August/early September to maximize coverage. With the lesser snowfall July in NZ is not like January here, but more like December. In South America there is usually more snow, but July is still best avoided due to South American holiday crowds and prices.

Tony Crocker":3bgwb9zm said:

I'm a bit surprised to hear people say that Timberline is better than the Euro glacier skiing, even Tignes, which I got the impression was much larger. But I'm getting the impression that Palmer is steeper than anything on the Grand Motte.

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At Tignes, it's Funicular to Tram and ski down to a couple of intermediate surface lifts. When I was there many years ago, it had a gondola rather than the Funicular. It's quite a bit longer than the surface lifts at Blackcomb but the lower part under the tram is barely low-intermediate. It was fun to do as a novelty for a day but I wouldn't fly to Geneva in August to go skiing.