Season 2016-17 Plans

Looking like a few days in O'Canada for me in early March. Other than that no trips have hit finalization stage for this season so far.
 
EMSC":3kir326x said:
Looking like a few days in O'Canada for me in early March......
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Big place, any specific locations yet? Not that it's necessary. You could book flights to Calgary/Spokane/etc. and leave the final destinations until last minute.
 
Annual Guys trip, so Calgary and Banff though a few of us may head over to Revelstoke or Kicking Horse for a day or two on an extended trip. The core dates/location set, but details still being hammered out.
 
I would strongly recommend the "Calgary loop" drive, splitting the time between Banff and Fernie/Castle. It's actually more efficient than driving as far as Revelstoke. Panorama is also halfway between Fernie and Lake Louise off Hwy 93.
 
jamesdeluxe said:
Valais, Switzerland: Mar 8 to 16
Road trip through the Val d’Anniviers and Val d’Hérens subregions. This is a highly rated off-the-beaten-path region surrounded by far more well-known Verbier, Crans-Montana, and Zermatt.

I had the good fortune to accompany my wife on a week-long work trip to Visp the end of June. While she was busy, I amused myself with train and bus trips around the Valais valley, down to St Nicklaus and Grachen. The latter looks like a ski area for youngsters, I think, but there are a lot of trails and several lifts on Google Maps, so it could be worth a visit)

I also traveled both east and west from Visp. I walked around Verbier, but what really caught my attention is a pair of villages somewhat east of Brig, Bettmeralp and Riederalp.

There seems to be quite a bit of skiing there, probably all on-piste, but I'm not sure. One of her coworkers has a chalet in Bettmeralp, so he skies there frequently.

Saas-Fee is on my to-do list as well. We had dinner there one evening, just before last bus (it's car-free).

Hope this is somewhat helpful. I know most of you have way more experience skiing Europe than I do (which is zero), but I'll get there one of these days.

Have a great season!

And, to wrap up this post with a nod to the original intent:

A week at Lake Louse Feb 13-19, with a side trip to Kicking Horse and Sunshine

Four days at Tremblant two weeks later.

Probably one day at Sugarbush on Black Friday, followed by two days of fawning over the pros at Killington. Maybe even get an autograph - who knows.

Tom
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pointpeninsula":y2srdm12 said:
what really caught my attention is a pair of villages somewhat east of Brig, Bettmeralp and Riederalp.
There seems to be quite a bit of skiing there, probably all on-piste, but I'm not sure. One of her coworkers has a chalet in Bettmeralp, so he skies there frequently.
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That region is known as the Aletsch Arena and is definitely on my radar. It's one of the more modern Swiss ski regions -- not much in the way of t-bars, which is unfortunate. Everyone seems to have good things to say about it other than that they've added some ugly concrete infrastructure that would be more typical at a French mega ski region than in olde-school Switzerland. Here's a German TR with lots of pix:
http://www.alpinforum.com/forum/viewtop ... 53&t=55424"
 
That was a great trip report - thanks for posting it. Based on the photo of the trail sign, perhaps a tad more snow than in June! :shock:
 
I browsed the alpinforum TR. That area is situated for impressive scenic views in all directions. However, the skiing is mostly SE facing, so I'd say that March poster got very lucky.

In general there are many more badly exposed areas in the Alps than in western North America. At latitude 46-47 you can often get away with that midwinter. This is a good reason for James' recurring late January timeframe. It opens up a lot more choices that might not be advisable in March after the school holiday crunch. I'll just note that the south-facing Flims-Laax still had refrozen snow on the lower half of terrain when I skied there late January 2013, so the exposure is still a risk factor.
 
Tony Crocker":2gxukpn4 said:
In general there are many more badly exposed areas in the Alps than in western North America. (...) I browsed the alpinforum TR. That area is situated for impressive scenic views in all directions. However, the skiing is mostly SE facing, so I'd say that March poster got very lucky.
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Given the sheer number of ski areas in the Alps compared to North America, there’s no question that a larger percentage are going to be at least partially south-facing. I scheduled my early-March trip to the Val d'Anniviers/Val d'Herens -- which consists of terrain that is either east- or west-facing (rather than optimum north-facing) -- but still has an excellent reputation for late-season conditions.

Tony tends to take a much more studied approach to destination trips than me. While I try not to make obvious mistakes, at the same time I like to plan in the possibility for oddly-located, under-the-radar ski areas like Mythen (comparatively low elevation) and Kappl (100% south-facing) that he would reject purely out of principle. :lol:

Speaking of Kappl, given that Tony will be in the region in mid-January, I’d recommend a one-day detour there before its connection to the expanding Ski Arlberg/Rendl sector, which environmental groups are opposing. You can see the planned new lifts in this article.
 
I skied off-piste in that area south of Rendl where the Kappl extension is proposed with Piste-to-Powder in 2013.

One idea with the extra 2 weeks is flexibility to check out places we hear are good last minute. That 2013 trip was a bit unlucky. Even east and west facing at Lech/Zurs had some crust from a warm spell just before we arrived.
 
Die Erteilung der Genehmigung ist aus Sicht des Naturschutzes, als auch aus naturschutzrechtlicher Sicht, schockierend. Die Region ist bereits in besonders starkem Maße von Skitourismus geprägt: zwischen Serfaus-Fiss-Ladies, See, Kappl, Ischgl und St. Anton verbleiben nur noch wenige Räume ohne starke Prägung menschlicher Aktivität. (...)

Der Anschluss des kleinen Skigebietes Kappl an einen großen Skizirkus lässt nun ein weiteres Familienskigebiet alleine dastehen: See im Paznauntal wird ohne Zweifel seine Bemühungen um einen Zusammenschluss mit Fiss-Serfaus-Ladis forcieren, um im Konkurrenzkampf mit Kappl-St. Anton und Ischgl bestehen zu können.
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The two quotes above from the article are interesting because they show how different things are over there compared to North America, where we have comparably so much physical space (both in the East and West): a skier version of the "be careful what you wish for" (huge, interconnected ski areas) maxim.

The first points out that the approval of Kappl/Rendl connection is "shocking because the region is already influenced by ski tourism to such a significant degree -- between Serfaus-Fiss-Ladis, See, Kappl, Ischgl, and St. Anton, there's not much space left that isn't strongly impacted by human activity."

The second quote criticises the connection of the smaller ski area Kappl to a big ski circus (Ski Arlberg) because it'll likely force the remaining standalone family area in the Paznaun Valley, See (100% north-facing), to link with the nearby interconnected region Serfaus-Fiss-Ladis (currently with 214 km of marked trails) to avoid being driven out of business due to its proximity to Ski Arlberg and Ischgl.
 
Will go to Southeast Asia for 1 month in June to experoence some wild nature and travel by bike around, then Canada, family and skiing for Christmas, March hopefully will ski in Austrian Alps. That's the plan for 2017-2018.
 
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