Our commuter rail lines in NYC, Boston, Philadelphia, etc. are all based on old private railroads that were sold to the government by the 1960s and 70
The light rail rights of way in greater L.A. are exactly the same.
I would've definitely cancelled the flights on my recent trip and tried again later in the season/hoping for better conditions.
Nowhere we skied on this trip was even close to the "disaster scenario" or even what sbooker experienced in the wrong sector of St. Anton. Most of the ski areas, Val d'Isere included, had sectors far above mediocrity, and it remains a mystery why the ESF guide on Jan. 28 didn't choose one of them. Since that experience aggravated James' hip injury and restricted him to on piste skiing the rest of the trip, it's very understandable why James came away with a negative view.
As for powder expectation, I analyzed this in exhaustive detail back in 2008. James' run of luck in the Alps during most of the 2010's and ours from 2014-2019 are in retrospect well above average. Most resorts in the Alps fall into the range of the group in my analysis where
60% of weeks will have no days with 6+ inches of new snow.
In 99% of North America that means you will not be skiing any powder. In the Alps your odds will be better due to less competition, but there are other constraints that will prevent days old untracked from being any good.
1) Warm temperatures, like the latter half of this trip.
2) Low altitude. Saalbach did not have any good powder in 2017 despite superb conditions on piste.
3) Wind hammering, either during or after storms, which is not all that uncommon above tree line. We saw much of that this year in Lauchernalp and Val d'Isere.
In some cases leftover powder can be found only
way off-piste with assistance from local guides. That was my experience with the Piste-to-Powder guides in St. Anton in 2013.
I had two Alps experiences with good powder multiple days after the last storm: the Arlberg in 2017 and the first week in 2019. That Arlberg week had 4 days where the temps never got much over 10F, and was considered highly abnormal by both Fraser and our host at the Sandhof in Lech. 2019 was colder than average too, and there was a top off of a few inches right before we started the trip in Lenzerheide and St. Moritz. We moved on to Engelberg, but scored the most primo off piste powder there with guides.
The other powder advantage in the Alps is the compact driving distances. You can land in Geneva, and if the best snow is in Austria or Italy you can get there in no more than two days.
Otherwise it's no different than I said back in 2008. Proactively raising powder odds means chasing within one week of a favorable weather forecast as ChrisC did this time. If air travel is involved you're not likely getting a reasonable price in either $$ or FF miles on that short notice.
These days, I don't really want to go unless conditions are going to be nearly perfect - which is not reality.
Even in ChrisC's case that doesn't mean exclusively powder. I think he would agree with me that also includes decent snow surfaces on any kind of interesting terrain different in scale or topography from what we get in North America. So I was thrilled to get those Mont Gele runs at Verbier on my last day, timed for soft windbuff in one direction and corn in the other. At ChrisC's level, there are also long technical lines, couloirs etc. far more abundant in the Alps. I realize that James may not share this view and be more focused on the powder.
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