Euro School Holiday Calendar for Upcoming Season

[Tony Crocker]

I'm too lazy to break down that site like ChrisC did. In terms of volume it's fairly simple. The Brits and French ski in France. The Germans ski in the other alpine countries. The Dutch ski in all of them. Since the notorious British February holiday week coincides with one of the French weeks, that week in France is the worst scenario outside of Christmas Week. The latter usually sucks for the same reasons as in North America: large crowds on incomplete terrain. Mardi Gras week has the highest proportion of Germans on holiday aside from Christmas.

British and French coincide over Easter Week too, but the volume is not at the level of February. James with his strict standards might not like it, but Liz and I have been there during parts of 3 of them and found them manageable.

 

[snowbird surfer]

Thank you Tony! Just what I was looking for.

?

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?

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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.

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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?

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Compare it to the Swiss government site: Zermatt - Gornergrat https://whiterisk.ch/en/conditions/measurements/station/IMIS/GOR2

I misunderstood your line. By “this project” I thought you were referencing my personal interest in crowd stats, not the particular site which we agree is lame.

 

[snowbird surfer]

Based on the data and considerable wisdom in this thread my Europe algorithm is as follows:
WHENEVER base depth and surface conditions in Aosta are good - get on a plane!
When planning for Presidents week, stick to Switzerland; if Epic - Andermatt; if ikon - Zermatt
Save Chamonix and Verbier for March when base depths are significant and crowds thin.

 

[Sbooker]

British and French coincide over Easter Week too, but the volume is not at the level of February.

I’ve not skied in Europe in the notorious February holidays so I have no reference point but I’ve skied at the big French domains a couple of times at Easter. In my experience Easter has not been by any measure crowded. I don’t think I’ve waited more than 30 seconds for a lift. It has generally been ‘ski on’.
I have the view that the Easter school holidays is the overall best time of the year for Australian families to travel to ski. Cheap airfares. Cheap lodging. No crowds. Great snow base and decent chance of fresh snow at appropriate mountains.

 

[Tony Crocker]

Cheap airfares.

From the US we find that the early spring flights to Europe are slightly more expensive than in mid-January to early February.

 

[Sbooker]

From the US we find that the early spring flights to Europe are slightly more expensive than in mid-January to early February.

Sorry. I was talking from Australian point of view (which I understand is not real important on this board) and talking travelling generally. It’s a great time for us to go to North America too.