Swiss Combo : Zermatt & Saas-Fee - August 24-25, 2011

Patrick

Active member
The basic text were written during that trip, but I only managed to get the information and picture into a nice TRs. I've posted the Zermatt TR a few weeks on Ski Mad World. Tonight it was Saas-Fee turn.

I spent 6 weeks in Europe in Summer 2011; out of those weeks, I managed to ski 7 times. The first two French TRs (Tignes and Les Deux Alpes) were posted on FTO a long time ago. My next 2 ski days were done back-to-back on a combo ticket that set me back 120 CHF. Considering that a single day ticket at cost 80 CHF, it was a bargain.

Two very different areas, both beautiful. Here is a sample of both TRs. Click on link for the words and a bunch of pictures in each TR. Going after a ski streak does have its advantages.

Zermatt CH : August 24, 2011 – Classic!!!
http://madpatski.wordpress.com/2013/06/ ... 1-classic/







Saas-Fee CH : August 25, 2011 – Between Zermatt and Zürich
http://madpatski.wordpress.com/2013/07/ ... nd-zurich/





 
These seemed to be the best 2 ski days of that trip. Rereading the French posts, it appears both of those days were severely constrained by late starts with the family. I had family with me on my Euro trip to Germany and Austria in August 1999 (kids were 14 and 10), and surprisingly never thought much about trying to do any skiing then. 1998-99 was a big year in the Alps, and 2010-11 was very bad. We saw a snowfield and a closed T-bar at the top of the Zugspitze around Aug. 20. At any rate, it rains a lot in the Alps in summer, including both of the days we were in Hallstadt, which is above Salzburg and below the Dachstein Glacier. I note that was an issue with your final ski day in Austria.

The other problem is how much gear to haul on a summer trip where skiing is a small part of the vacation and the local shops are not thinking about accommodating skiers. We took complete ski gear to Montana despite skiing only 3 days out of 3 weeks. I have no idea whether we would have been able to rent even just skis at Red Lodge. And it would have been a PITA to return them when we were on our way to Yellowstone. The later skiing on Logan Pass would have been impossible if we didn't have our own gear. Your compromise of taking boots but not skis is the choice many would make, and I have done that myself to New Zealand when other parts of the trip have been in tropical locales.
 
jasoncapecod":211r7g9y said:

Skiing in the summer is always special. Probably more so when you need to gain so much elevation to access to the snow like in Zermatt.

Tony Crocker":211r7g9y said:
These seemed to be the best 2 ski days of that trip. Rereading the French posts, it appears both of those days were severely constrained by late starts with the family. (...) At any rate, it rains a lot in the Alps in summer. (...) I note that was an issue with your final ski day in Austria.

Best 2 days of the TRs posted so far, maybe. :-k I still have 2 more in Draft mode.

When I skied in France (Aug 12 and 21), part of Europe was in a heat wave. 36c at the bottom of Les Deux Alpes is a bit extreme. The weather cooled off afterward. Arrived in Zermatt on the 23rd (it rained for maybe 30-60 minutes), rained again after the skiing on the 24 and 25 in Zermatt and Saas Fee. Rained on the 26 when leaving SF. Rained on the 29 in Hintertux in the late afternoon...it was pretty much the same forecast everyday in the Alps from the first day I arrived in Zermatt. If it didn't rain, it was very close to. That last day, the forecast wasn't any different except that it did rain during the skiing hours.

Zermatt has the best elevation.
Tignes orientation isn't great.
Les Deux Alpes is one of the flattest, but probably best park with Saas Fee.
Overall terrain? Hintertux?
 
Patrick":mo6cb2nf said:
Skiing in the summer is always special.
But not always in a good way. Long approaches, whether by access lifts as in the Alps or sometimes under your own power. Snow can be suncupped, gloppy or icy. Most of mine is June/July and I would say overall quality was best in 2011 at Mammoth and 2012 in the Northwest. Even our jaded administrator might have found that skiing well worth the effort. August/September is much tougher. If you can evade the frequent summer rain in the Alps, I was fairly impressed with what I saw in this TR. It might be worth spending a tourist week in the Alps for sightseeing, being flexible with one's activities with the weather. Perhaps I should have considered that in 1999.
 
Nice to see a report from a good day at Hintertux, since the other one pretty much sucked.

As noted before and now I have a little bit of data to back it up, it rains A LOT in the Alps in summer.
 
Tony Crocker":1rlsfywc said:
Nice to see a report from a good day at Hintertux, since the other one pretty much sucked.

As noted before and now I have a little bit of data to back it up, it rains A LOT in the Alps in summer.

But generally it was late afternoon. The only time it was raining in the "ski hours" was on the day I was leaving Saas-Fee and the Hintertux September 1 day.

Since I left France on the 23rd, it rained maybe 1 hour on the 23rd in Zermatt, 24th in the evening once I arrived in Saas-Fee (I think?), 25th again then t-storm and into the morning of the 26th. Fresh snow on the 28th (so it would have rained the evening before), 30th, 31th (less than 1 hour each) and Sept 1 starting in the morning.

During that time, the rain would move into the late afternoon. There wasn't any rain in the previous week in the French Alps; it was more a heat wave.
 
http://www.meteoswiss.admin.ch/web/en/c ... tions.html

This website has monthly summary totals of both snowfall and water precipitation in selected Swiss locations. Unfortunately there is no year-by-year info and I only found 9 locations of interest to skiers.

Nonetheless 3 useful insights about the Alps:
1) Average snowfall is fairly even by month. No midwinter concentration like Japan and even April is not far off the winter months, sort of like Colorado.
2) Once you get high enough (Andermatt mid or Davos upper) snow density is in the 7-8% range. At lower sites it can still be in that range midwinter but is higher in the shoulder seasons, probably from rain mix. I wasn't all that surprised by this given comments from james and others than sheltered powder in the Alps can still be good a few days after a storm.
3) All 9 of the sites get more water content precipitation from May-October than from November-April, except the 2 snowiest sites, which still get 49% and 43%. This is the biggest difference vs. western North America, where I'd guess those percentages would range from 10% in California to maybe 30% in Colorado.
 
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