Aim high this winter

By Peter Hardy, Daily Mail

Last updated at 10:27 25 November 2003


The ski season is getting off to a slow start in the Alps. Hopes were raised four weeks ago when a severe storm dumped half a metre of snow in Austria, France, and Switzerland, and Austria announced the best start to a ski season in 60 years.

But, alas, such excitement has proved premature. After exceptionally balmy weather in recent days, the snow in valleys across the Alps has mostly melted, leaving nursery slopes unenticingly muddy.

However, the overall picture remains promising. While it is still too early to predict if skiers will enjoy a white Christmas across Europe, the higher resorts are already opening their lifts.

Best conditions this week have been at Cervinia (2,050m) in Italy, which has been open since mid-October with 30cm on the lower slopes and more than a metre at the top.

This week in Tignes, France, I skied the full 1,300m vertical down to the funicular station at Val Claret in outstanding winter snow conditions.

Some 15cm of fresh powder on the glacier last weekend even offered a taste of off-piste. Early snowfalls at altitude have done much to repair the damage to the glaciers caused by the hot summer, which saw Mont Blanc lose a million years of permafrost in a single weekend. But crevasses gape wide open.

There is already good cover on most slopes above 2,200m, but shirt-sleeve temperatures lower down have prevented artificial snowmaking.

Hopefully, all this should change in the next few days as a low pressure system sweeps in from the Atlantic, bringing colder weather and the probability of heavy snow if the wind swings to the north-west.

This would keep alive the hopes of resorts such as Obertauern and Lech in Austria, as well as Les Deux Alpes in France and Davos in Switzerland, which plan to open next weekend.

Across the Atlantic, snow has arrived in earnest. Almost a metre has fallen this week on Whistler, the most popular destination in North America for British skiers and boarders. Blackcomb is now open, and Whistler Mountain follows next weekend.

Banff has also got snow. Lake Louise and Sunshine Village are partly open.

Loveland in Colorado won the race to be the first U.S. resort to open, just ahead of Arapahoe Basin.

In Utah, 5ft of snow fell in less than a week in Little Cottonwood Canyon, allowing Snowbird to open last weekend with superb conditions.

Snowmass at Aspen opened this weekend, ahead of schedule, with some of its best early conditions in years.

In Europe, of course, reliable conditions can't be guaranteed until mid-December. Early snowfall below 1,600m in the French Alps has been sparse in recent seasons.

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