Zermatt, April 19, 2018

ChrisC

Well-known member
Here are some photos of Zermatt in later April.

A record snow year in Zermatt - so they did not dig out / operate some of their highest lifts. It was fine with me - lowered the skier traffic. But just such a weird ethos about the place. Best ever year - but we are not going to bother with some of the best lifts. Crazy Insane! Squaw Valley gets upset after a 10 foot blizzard if they do not get all lifts back in 2 day --- try a season!!!

I became friends with the cable car guys - because I was the only one there. They started watching out for me - I told them my planned routes. They were Swiss German - communication issues - I would just point a bit to various places. Sometimes a head would shake NO.
 

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Some photos.

I really like Zermatt. The off piste is huge in great snow years. The setting is just amazing. The food is off the hook. And I had my own private cable car everyday on Hohtalli that was sporting powder on top 1000 ft and great corn after 130 on the lower 2000ft.
 

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jasoncapecod":3vjlod8d said:
Hohtalli was a boulder field when I was there a few years ago..

I was the in the summer 10 years ago and I saw so many rocks on the way up to the glacier - I thought the place would never be skiable. Everything was covered exceptionally well. Ski anywhere.

Most years - I would expect Zermatt to be scenic, but not a great place for advanced/experts/off-piste.
 
ChrisC":3iwx02c9 said:
so they did not bother to dig out / operate some of their highest lifts.
The terrain off the top chair at Rothorn would be accessible (though not patrolled/avy controlled) but you would have to continue down 3,000 vertical feet to Patrullarve. Fraser recommended those ski routes but I did not try them in 2014 due to weather and other ski priorities. We did take a few laps on that upper chair on our first day.

Stockhorn seems very vulnerable to all kinds of weather issues; I think you have to be lucky to see that open. But Hohtalli is so vast neither ChrisC or I felt that deprived by its closure. Hohtalli was walk-on and maybe half full the 3x I rode it in 2014. All of those rides were late in the day with OK but not ideal weather. Still, it's surprising to see Hohtalli as deserted as in Chris' pics in presumably nice weather. But it was April 19 so I'm guessing overall skier traffic was below what it might have been a month earlier.

ChrisC":3iwx02c9 said:
Squaw Valley gets upset after a 10 foot blizzard if they do not get all lifts back in 2 day
ChrisC must not have heard about the "money holds" Squaw has put on certain lifts in recent years. Broken Arrow has not run in a very long time and Olympic Lady rarely runs since KT-22 was converted to high speed. In these cases the terrain served is still accessible by other means though somewhat less conveniently. Most objectionable is the frequent closure of Silverado, which I observed personally on March 29, 2017 in perfect weather with the huge snowpack of that season. This terrain, perhaps 10-15% of Squaw's acreage, is essentially backcountry earned turns without that lift running.

jasoncapecod":3iwx02c9 said:
Hohtalli was a boulder field when I was there a few years ago..
That was at Christmas, not the right time to ski Zermatt. One of my Iron Blosam friends made that same mistake this season and to no surprise was confined to the pistes. In 2014 I noticed huge boulders under the Findeln - Breitboden chair. I also hit a couple of rocks in the powder on skier's left side of Hohtalli. I looked up Fraser's summary of 2013-14 in the Alps and it was a season that strongly favored the south over the north, so good for Zermatt: https://www.weathertoski.co.uk/weather- ... w-2013-14/

As for Zermatt's snow reliability, the only snowfall measurements we know about are the 99 inch average in town. But the 250 inches at Plan Maison at 8,200 feet in Cervinia are likely similar at comparable elevation in Zermatt (Blauherd, Riffelberg, Schwatzsee) according to Fraser. So yes the off-piste issue is the ruggedness of the terrain, needing lots of snow for adequate coverage. Thus don't go to Zermatt for off-piste before February in most seasons, and March is probably safer. This is a pattern we should all know regarding steep terrain in Colorado with similar excellent snow preservation.
 
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ChrisC":2oi4yklj said:
It’s the anti basic bro culture of Jackson Hole.
Yep, that's ^^ something I can do without.

Many people on Alpinforum grumble about cable cars at major Alps resorts that are supposed to leave every 15 minutes but often wait an extra five or ten minutes until they're full.

Just counted: between Tony, ChrisC, and me, 40 Euro reports posted this season!
 
jamesdeluxe":3ex3ygmn said:
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ChrisC":3ex3ygmn said:
It’s the anti basic bro culture of Jackson Hole.
Yep, that's ^^ something I can do without.

Many people on Alpinforum grumble about cable cars at major Alps resorts that are supposed to leave every 15 minutes but often wait an extra five or ten minutes until they're full.

Just counted: between Tony, ChrisC, and me, 40 Euro reports posted this season!

I have a Mountain Collective Pass (primarily due to Telluride) ... I went to Jackson Hole (Where my brother's's friend is based).... Totally average year .... I skied it .... not great ....

Telluride had more snow in town than Jackson

I have to get my stuff together - and tell you about Jackson
 
Tony Crocker":wc3cihk8 said:
That compares to 14 from Utah. 5 of those were mine and another two from tseeb. :stir:
To be fair: I have a local place here in NJ where I do 90% of my mountain biking because it's close by, very reliable (drains quickly after rain), fun (in a mostly blue-square-terrain kind of way), very few other riders even on nice weekends, and extensive. After several hundred rides there over the years, I don't know what I could possibly write about it.

The Utards know Alta/Snowbird even better than I know my joint -- they've named every goddamned rock, bush, and gully across the 4,700 or so acres; they know virtually every person in the vicinity, both locals and many visitors -- and may be in a similar situation: love to go there/don't have anything more to say about it? They've already gone on record as being proudly parochial (no real interest in going outside of LCC other than an occasional foray to Snowbasin or Powder Mountain). Out of necessity given where I live and personal preference, I'm a variety junkie as far as lift-served skiing. They're the opposite.
 
jamesdeluxe":3kyao612 said:
Tony Crocker":3kyao612 said:
That compares to 14 from Utah. 5 of those were mine and another two from tseeb. :stir:
To be fair: I have a local place here in NJ where I do 90% of my mountain biking because it's close by, very reliable (drains quickly after rain), fun (in a mostly blue-square-terrain kind of way), very few other riders even on nice weekends, and extensive. After several hundred rides there over the years, I don't know what I could possibly write about it.

The Utards know Alta/Snowbird even better than I know my joint -- they've named every goddamned rock, bush, and gully across the 4,700 or so acres; they know virtually every person in the vicinity, both locals and many visitors -- and may be in a similar situation: love to go there/don't have anything more to say about it? They've already gone on record as being proudly parochial (no real interest in going outside of LCC other than an occasional foray to Snowbasin or Powder Mountain). Out of necessity given where I live and personal preference, I'm a variety junkie as far as lift-served skiing. They're the opposite.
That pretty much nails it. Besides, Tony seems to be the only one upset about the lack of [identical] Alta reports. It snowed. We skied. Some days better than others, some others downright spectacular, a few merely meh.
There you go - 40 days of Alta reports in 3 sentences.
 
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