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Yes, I can see you have to make an airport choice in advance if it's a short trip. At Solden itself, it's probably only the two glaciers that are reliable early season. Kingslug gave a big thumbs down on a January trip there when weather did not cooperate, said lower sectors had lots of...

Detailed overview above is added to existing thread on the topic. An ominous point is that the Jordanelle water allotment for snowmaking is not unlimited. In fact the new water available to the new terrain is proportionately lower than what Deer Valley is utilizing on its prior terrain.

:eusa-doh: I realized I have some summary water-to-snow data from both Austria and Switzerland! West coast North America rain vs. snow incidence: Nov. > Dec. > Jan. + Apr. > Feb. + Mar. Nov. Dec. Jan. Feb. Mar. Apr. Alpine Mdws 7,000 20.9% 17.1% 15.3% 14.1% 13.9% 14.4% High Alps...

I would not make that statement for off piste. 2018-19 was an exceptionally banner early season through January at least for Austria and eastern Switzerland with repeated Nordstau storms. We scored that region a month after James did. And you would not say that such events are more likely in...

We had to go through Sydney to get to Broome in 2023. I would guess that fewer international destinations have direct flights to Brisbane vs. Sydney but probably the connections in the foreign countries make more sense than backtracking to Sydney. It's sort of like how our Alps trips are...

I'll agree with James on this one. You're betting mostly on snowmaking anyway. But you need to be monitoring the weather for maybe a month ahead. Rain events are the red flag for low altitudes in terms of both preventing snowmaking and setting back any that has already been done. Here's a...

SYD is one of my least favored airports for transfers. They make you reclaim baggage and schelp it from the international to the domestic terminal. We have done this twice, in 2019 and 2023. My guess is that this problem will be corrected at WSI. Montreal Mirabel airport was opened during...

Fraser: https://www.weathertoski.co.uk/top-10s/top-10-early-season-ski-resorts-europe/ If you read the above, the emphasis is upon higher and colder areas where snowmaking is more reliable and rain is rare. Having enough natural snow for off piste is more erratic, and the flexibility that...

Worldskitraveller's home page has a reference to Marko Schuster, who has skied 751 ski areas in 28 countries. This quote on Schuster's page caught my eye. Italy has Schuster's highest ski area count at 186. I came prepared for the crossing from Zermatt into Cervinia, here at top of Plateau...

His more detailed answer earlier in this thread: WST recognizes that the broad ski public and media relate more to counting ski areas vs. ski lifts, and so ski areas are a secondary objective. WST averages 8.4 lifts per area skied, identical to Oliver Kern and substantially more than Peter...

Of course I had to look it up and it hit one of my prejudice buttons being heavily south facing, like Crans-Montana and Flims-Laax. I asked Jimmy and he said he likes it much more than those places. Scuol is also quite remote from big population centers and thus I suspect not crowded. So it...

Yes, my presumption is that the trains are great if you going for a week from Geneva or Zurich to one ski region. But once the trip gets longer and moving from one ski area to another, no one wants to retrace to a hub to do that. ChrisC did do the research! I was certainly thinking in terms...

Done, those impressive scenery posts are now here.

I'll disagree with this. Whenever I found out, it was on his website somewhere. ChrisC and I Iikely "didn't get it" as WST's trip was unfolding because: We may have reasons to critique WST's ski priorities but I'll admit it wasn't entirely fair before we actually knew what they were...

My assumption has been that trams are the only lifts that can handle very long spans between towers, and are also more wind resistant. The Alps have a lot more of that topography than North American ski areas. And sightseeing is a much higher component of revenue in the Alps, like Palm Springs...

Skiing big picture should prioritize terrain (whatever each individual enjoys most personally) and snow conditions. Yes, I know the saying, "there's good snow and there's snow that's good for you." But when bad conditions reach the point of lifts/terrain closed (that includes off-piste if...

Switzerland is the alpine country most strongly committed to public transportation. At Saas-Fee and Ovrannaz we parked in lots/garages not an easy walk to the lifts and took a shuttle bus. So that's an unusual feature of Gstaad. 1) These places had close in parking near the slopes for...

We have driven through Megeve 3x and it has always looked unappetizing from either complete lack of snow or obviously rain soaked snow. These reports are helpful to keep in the back of our mind to seize the day if we are ever over there when conditions are favorable. That's what we did in 2017...

ChrisC did not post his vertical in these last 3 TRs. But he has the same objective I do in visiting new place, to see and ski as complete an overview of the area as possible. The difference is that he covers ground a lot faster. Our survey of Grand Massif was 60K vertical over two days...

That explains @Worldskitraveller's totally misleading comments about Stowe after presumably riding the Forerunner quad only once. What really takes the cake is being close to ends-of-the-earth Mt. Bohemia and passing up a 2 foot powder day there to stay on his molehill tour schedule. I'm...