Euro School Holiday Calendar for Upcoming Season
- Thread starter Tony Crocker
- Start date
Between big crowds and the poor snow record, one wonders why anyone would willingly subject themselves to the Xmas/New Year's week.
ChrisC
Well-known member
In 2004/05, Chamonix at New Year's was not that bad. You can look at my reports from that ancient era. I would do it again.
Me today: I overanalyze snowfall, and take the joy out of skiing.
We skied all over the place that holiday - Courmayeur to Megeve. I went to Verbier as well (bad snow).
That's progress!
ChrisC
Well-known member
That's progress!
I blame Tony.
But I was always going to go down the rabbit hole.This year - I just said f-it. My friend David said we are going to Cervinia for Easter. So I just did it. After the amazing snowfall early, it just dried by March. I got a little lucky in Milan.
I don't post a lot of Cervinia photos because it's his children.
But yes - his son skied with me with very steep sections.
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Express that opinion too often and you might get banned from the SkiTalk forum!
An American bloke with a thing for snowfall stats gave me some Epic online advice when I first started my skiing obsession that Easter was a better bet when restricted to school holidays. I have mostly acted on that advice.
snowbird surfer
Member
I previously posted this and now realize it is in the wrong thread [now in the right thread, TC]. Apologies in advance as I am not sure how to move.
This is an interesting site.
leere-pisten.de
ChrisC, can you (and other powder hound data scientists on this site) interrogate this AI driven crowd calendar prediction page? The host is trying to mimic touring plans/undercover tourist and other theme park prediction models. At first glance, I’d say their predictive model pertaining to snow needs some SERIOUS tuning as it wrongly points to the second week of December as the best snow window for many resorts they cover. Though surface conditions are not the model’s chief concern, this is an egregious mistake and leads me to question their crowd calendar conclusions. I love touring plans for theme park family planning and so I love the concept of crowd modeling.
The data and compute should be available to produce a quality predictive crowd calendar for ski resorts, but again, I question whether or not the authors have successfully done so here.
This is an interesting site.
Find empty ski resorts – Crowd Score for the Alps | Crowdless Slopes
Crowd Score by calendar week: find quiet ski resorts across the Alps and plan a ski trip without the crowds.
leere-pisten.de
ChrisC, can you (and other powder hound data scientists on this site) interrogate this AI driven crowd calendar prediction page? The host is trying to mimic touring plans/undercover tourist and other theme park prediction models. At first glance, I’d say their predictive model pertaining to snow needs some SERIOUS tuning as it wrongly points to the second week of December as the best snow window for many resorts they cover. Though surface conditions are not the model’s chief concern, this is an egregious mistake and leads me to question their crowd calendar conclusions. I love touring plans for theme park family planning and so I love the concept of crowd modeling.
The data and compute should be available to produce a quality predictive crowd calendar for ski resorts, but again, I question whether or not the authors have successfully done so here.
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I do not have the time to explore that link, but it should not try to contaminate crowd data with expected snow conditions.
snowbird surfer
Member
This is great, but where do the Dutch/germans/italians/french/british etc typically holiday? I’d bet less than 5% of these weeks are a spontaneous powder chase; rather, they are likely prebooked family or friend group vacations. Surely this data is out there and can be gleaned to create a euro week by week algorithm + powder chase optionality which can minimize crowds and maximize the chance to score. The site I linked attempts to solve for crowding, but I question it’s accurately when it doesn’t even know when it snows.
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Apples and oranges (crowds vs.snow reliability). Post #40 above shows crowds on a total level and where they come FROM. As to where they go, Vanat lists the highest cross border traffic.
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ChrisC
Well-known member
I would not spend too much time on this project. Like zero. Seems like an irrelevant exercise
Skiing is less like visiting theme parks, cruises, golf resorts, or beach resorts (etc). With a mostly uniform, homogeneous experience, crowd calendars are relevant. One can charge for Disney Crowd Calendars. The Weather is simple: don't go when it's too cold or too rainy.
Meanwhile, skiing is all about the weather and snowfall. I am primarily concerned with:
I have skied Chamonix for a week over New Year's and in early February. Again, avoid Saturdays! Possibly Sundays due to Weekenders and Locals. Powder days at Grands Montets can be busy.
Verbier and Zermatt over early-mid February. Again, avoid Saturdays! Powder mornings can bring the locals out at Verbier for a few hours, but too much terrain for them to destroy.
Skiing is less like visiting theme parks, cruises, golf resorts, or beach resorts (etc). With a mostly uniform, homogeneous experience, crowd calendars are relevant. One can charge for Disney Crowd Calendars. The Weather is simple: don't go when it's too cold or too rainy.
Meanwhile, skiing is all about the weather and snowfall. I am primarily concerned with:
- Snow Bases. Typically, when does expert terrain have enough coverage? For the Alps, mid/late January. Lower elevation or south-facing mountains see impairment by mid-March or sooner. High elevation or north-facing resorts are good into early April.
- Snowfall. Often this can be balanced throughout the winter, so snow base is more important. Exception: Japan is a 2-month window of January-to-February. Colorado does well in March. Alps are more balanced. Storm chasing more important.
- Day of Week/Weekends. Avoid Saturdays near cities. At destination resorts (2-3 hours from city), changeover days/weekends are uncrowded.
- School Calendar. It's a bit tertiary/last. January and March are always fine. So is early February. Italy does not have school weeks; always OK except Sud Tyrol. Switzerland is a bit pricey, so always OK-ish; you can ski cheaper elsewhere with school-age children. France - avoid Paris vacation (last 2 weeks). Austria - busy with Germans during 2 weeks in February.
I have skied Chamonix for a week over New Year's and in early February. Again, avoid Saturdays! Possibly Sundays due to Weekenders and Locals. Powder days at Grands Montets can be busy.
Verbier and Zermatt over early-mid February. Again, avoid Saturdays! Powder mornings can bring the locals out at Verbier for a few hours, but too much terrain for them to destroy.
Alta/Snowbird PTSD is a real thing! 
snowbird surfer
Member
This project involves asking you and other experts on this site to summarize their acquired wisdom. Parents of school aged kids - i have a quarter dozen - know crowding can be a real problem when faced with a fixed holiday schedule. Snow base and surface conditions are paramount, but an enjoyable vacation also requires avoidance of long lines and scraped slopes.
In the states, this translates into avoiding Stowe/Park City/LCC over Christmas/New Years and presidents week. Better off making a move to Canada in December/early January and Telluride or Europe during presidents/NYC private school spring break/Easter.
In Europe, crowd flow surely follows a pattern which can be predicted based on school holidays and historical visitation. Tony eludes to this above, Your comments add helpful context. Thank you.
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From 2023-24
1) Germany to Austria
2) Germany to Italy
3) UK to France
4) Netherlands to Austria
5) Germany to Switzerland
6) UK to Austria
7) Netherlands to France
8) USA to Canada
9) Switzerland to Austria
10) Denmark to Norway
What proportion of skiers reside outside the country where they are skiing?
The outlier, 94% in Andorra
Austria 66%
Switzerland 35%
Italy 35%
France 27%
Norway 47%
USA 3%
Canada 12%
Japan 10%
Australia 2%
New Zealand 36%
Chile 45%
Argentina 25%
The above info and the school holiday calendar I posted earlier should be adequate for avoiding the worst holiday crowds.
ChrisC
Well-known member
?
The site/project is a bit of nonsense with questionable data inputs and no real insights. Maybe 30-60 minutes of vibe coding time?
No look/smell test of the loaded snowfall data.
Crowds
Insight: April is not crowded. Christmas/February are crowded. How does that help?
He also loaded typical calendar week estimates for every resort. Large French resorts like Les Arcs, Alpe d'Huez, etc sell discounted Saturday tickets since no one skis on changeover dates.
Google searches as a proxy for ski resort crowding?
Snow Data
Here are the data sources - a bunch of random APIs he subscribes to that utilize estimates, and knowingly overestimate snow depth and snowfall.
Data: Open-Meteo.com
From APIs. It's garbage. Same crap OpenSnow uses.
| snow_depth | Instant | meters | Snow depth on the ground. Snow depth in ERA5-Land tends to be overestimated. As the spatial resolution for snow depth is limited, please use it with care. |
|---|
Zermatt data?
This is incorrect and inflated. Winter 2017-18, Cervinia/Zermatt received almost 2000cm. Yet snow bases are equivalent to the last few years?
Compare it to the Swiss government site: Zermatt - Gornergrat https://whiterisk.ch/en/conditions/measurements/station/IMIS/GOR2
