New Alps Guidebook Looks Tempting

Looks like a potential corrective/expansion to the Where To Ski and Snowboard Worldwide series, which was worthwhile but aimed at a primarily casual British audience equally concerned with high-speed lifts, piste length, lodging, restaurants, ease of access, et al. I haven't seen the new country-specific editions, which may be more helpful to people like us.

Are you going to order one? I'm curious to see if they cover any of the obscure joints that I've visited or if it'll be a detailed powder-specific best-of with the usual suspects that we're already aware of, which would still be of value to me.
 
Yes we ordered one. It covers 125+ areas so should include some less famous places. But in response to a question:
It consist mostly of resort and side-resort riding. Not much splitboarding/skitouring included.
I think it's likely the info here will be useful to skiers like James and me.

Where To Ski and Snowboard and Weather-to-Ski are aimed at the same overall audience (British piste skiers), with Fraser Wilkins at the latter having more of a weather/conditions focus.

Someone (Staley perhaps) told me about WePowder before last year's Alps trip. WePowder is more like OpenSnow, a weather forecasting site, usually updated daily and generally including discussions of snow stability, always a good heads-up in the Alps. So a Resort Guide book is new for them.

Both Fraser and WePowder have noted widespread snow in the Alps (mostly from the south) during the first half of November.
 
I think I may have mentioned WePowder last year, and in any case, I’m hoping to pick up the book this year. I suspect it’ll be useful to have for my trip that begins Jan 1st, but Morris from WePowder indicates it won’t arrive in the US by then. So I’m looking into getting it shipped to some location in Europe where I can pick it up on the first day of the trip.

Thus far, there has been a huge amount of snow in the southern Alps. Serre Chevalier/Southern French Alps, Alagna and the Italian Piedmont, Andermatt, Zermatt, the Dolomites, and Sudtirol in Austria look pretty much good to go for the season. The Pyrenees have had deep powder days for the past week.

I had previously pretty much written off the Dolomites as an off piste option for early January, but will now look into whether the various couloirs are in play early in the season. I’m hoping to focus more on Italy, Austria, and France over Switzerland because mountain guides are so much cheaper.
 
Whether the current base is survivable to early January in the absence of continuing snow is debatable. The snow will survive the best at high north facing areas like Zermatt, St. Moritz, Andermatt. Also Val d'Isere/Tignes, which often gets snow from these southern storms spilling over from Italy as occurred on my trip there in April 2018. Three years ago the Arlberg had an early November dump but there was zero snow on the ground at New Year's below 2,200 meters, which meant that when the snow finally resumed it was extremely dangerous above 2,200 so the backside Valluga was closed when we were there.

Very few areas are opening immediately from these storms, so it will be best to follow Fraser and WePowder closely when they do. Staley should also be making direct calls to guide services in late December to find out what off pistes routes are being guided. We won't be in the Alps until March 18 this season, so this early activity is much less relevant to us.
 
I ordered this book. While beautiful - lots of FATMAPS and other photos - I just do not think it's all that valuable. (First, none of the photos are described - location, slope, etc).

The website is great! -- much better and more useful.

My critique: I like the information about storm tracks and what time of the year for best conditions.
However, information like aspect ( a simple google maps 5-sec search can get you that on your own), and some steepness gradients (that seem to include the entire domaine) - are silly. (Every resort seems to have 20-30% of terrain as steep. Who cares?) What help or insight are you providing?

The ski maps are even more basic and disappointing - and a single paragraph about many vast Euro expanses - is not very useful.

Let's take Val d'Isere:

Only 6 areas described by maybe 300 hundred words. I could write a better off-piste description in my 7 lifetime days there.

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Andermatt, La Grave, big names - have there main routes described....and even smallet places like Disentis. But you will not really get any insider off-piste ski information from this book.

Overall, not as good as website - lots of filler info, pictures, maps - basic info about treeline, tree type, storm track, aspect - but very little actionable information.

You should buy the guide books for the specific mountain you are skiing.

For example, this is a great book - and really helped me ski Verbier a year ago in early April:
https://www.backcountrybooks.co/collect ... de-verbier" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;"

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