How Many Days to Spend at a Ski Area

[Tony Crocker]

What month would you spend in Switzerland?

I would first want to know how much and which areas in Switzerland are impacted by the prime season (second week Feb to first week Mar) school holidays. If needing to avoid that period most of the places ChrisC enumerated would favor before those holidays due to low altitude (Portes-du-Soleil, Adelboden, Jungfrau) or bad exposure (Laax). But higher and drier places like 4 Vallees, upper Rhone Valley (include not listed Zermatt and Saas-Fee) would favor after school holidays.

 

[jamesdeluxe]

This a very broad debate all over the North American ski world in the Epic/Ikon era: the tradeoff between marquee areas and lower crowds. And this is subjective too. James has always been firmly on one far end of the spectrum on this debate.

This is somewhat off-topic but since Tony brings it up -- while I am for the most part guilty as charged of this ^^ offense, I'll argue again that putting me "on one far end of the spectrum on this debate" isn't completely accurate. Extreme examples are Harvey skiing exclusively at NYS ski areas or Patrick sacrificing northern hemisphere winter skiing to concentrate exclusively on his streak. I'm going to copy/paste my list from a previous thread showing that I do not, in fact, avoid big mainstream resorts like the plague. I've skied more than one day at the following:

• Alps mega resorts like the Skiwelt, Portes du Soleil, 3 Vallees, Val d'Isere/Tignes, Serre Chevalier, Lech/Warth/St. Anton, the Jungfrau, Megeve, Ischgl, Saalbach, Kitzbuhel
• Not quite mega but still very large (in comparison to stateside) industrial resorts like St. Moritz, Kleinwalsertal, Arosa/Lenzerheide, Hochkönig, Espace Diamant, Andermatt, La Clusaz, Montafon Silvretta, Pra Loup/Val d'Allos
• North American players like Jackson Hole, Altabird, Lake Louise, Vail, Taos, The Canyons, Deer Valley, Killington, Tremblant, Stowe. I've even been to Hunter a number of times!

If I purchase a megapass like Ikon (very possible in the near future), I'll certainly be visiting more mainstream resorts because I'm only against them when fighting hordes during peak periods and being processed like in a stockyard. For the upcoming season, I'll once again use an Indy Pass but with expanded flexibility I'm going to score more days, especially in the northeast.

 

[Tony Crocker]

Extreme examples are Harvey skiing exclusively at NYS ski areas

I agree more extreme than James.

Patrick sacrificing northern hemisphere winter skiing to concentrate exclusively on his streak.

Apples and oranges. I don't see much of a bias from Patrick in famous vs. under-the-radar places. The Streak has an inherent bias toward higher visibility areas because the smaller places are much less likely to be open outside the Christmas to early April timeframe.

 

[jamesdeluxe]

Apples and oranges. I don't see much of a bias from Patrick in famous vs. under-the-radar places.

I was referring to your descriptor of me as "extreme" so I pointed out that Harvey and Patrick's formats are far more extreme than mine in that they haven't made exceptions to their rules in many moons.

While smaller, more obscure ski areas are certainly my bread and butter, I've also been to a fair number of mega/industrial/mainstream ski areas, noted above, and I continue to ski them (Skiwelt and Killington last season) when the opportunity presents itself. I prefer the term "rigorous."