First Timers Tips For Skiing Europe
The Straight Story On The Continental Skiing Scene For Seniors.
I have coached in pretty well all of the European skiing countries. SeniorsSkiing asked me could I recommend resorts to suit mature American skiers, especially first time visitors to the Continent. Here goes.
The range of possibilities is vast. France plasters its slopes with lifts, Italy takes a more environmental view and installs fewer but longer lifts up valleys, offering equally long descents. Gressoney St Jean in the Aosta region (about an hour from Turin) is a classic example, it also links to Champoluc and Alagna.
Other Examples
Waidring: 10 lifts, 16 trails, intermediate-beginner, gemutlichkeit.
A friend went to Waidring in Austria every year for ten years. Great people, great snow, warm welcomes. They have a tradition called gemutlichkeit – geniality or friendliness. It is tiny – 10 lifts,16 trails all told, half of them intermediate, half of them beginner.
Val Thorens: 163 lifts, 373 miles of trails, ski to Courchevel
Compare that to Val Thorens-Meribel-Courchevel – 163 lifts, 373 miles of trails, 192,000 feet of vertical descent. Start in Val Thorens, ski to Courchevel, and you may not have time to get back. Hugely popular with Brits (far too popular for me, I hate lift queues)
What’s On Offer?
Different resorts in every country target different types of skiers – though they hope to get everybody.
Take the Chamonix Valley for instance, steeped in mountaineering history. Each of its resorts offers a spread of challenge but with a bias.
The lowest resort, Les Houches: charming, easier, all trails are in wooded areas, amply supplied with atmospheric mountain restaurants.
Almost an hour’s ski bus ride from Les Houches – is Le Tour. Almost treeless, big sweeping terrain, as well as plenty of intermediate trails it offers some easily accessible off-piste.
In between you have Le Brevent – high, steep, not easy; or Argentiere, home of the “hard men”, some of the blues would classify red (black) in other places.
When conditions permit, from Chamonix centre a telecabine takes you to the 22 km Vallee Blanche in the high mountains, and you only need to be intermediate, but you’ll need a professional guide: don’t try it on your own.
So How To Choose?
The internet is full of “the three best French ski resorts”; or “the ten best Austrian ones”; it’s endless.
What we need is a selection process. How does this seem:
Kitzbuehel: €€€€€
- How pricey is it? There are big differences. If you select Kitzbuhel (fashionable) everything is more expensive than Kirchberg which is just a few miles up the road and accesses the same trails. Some resorts are designed around high net worth folk seeking luxury.
- What duration is the connection time between your airport and the resort. It can be up to four hours or as little as only one. Does it matter to you?
- Many European resorts are inter-connected, ask them what standard of skiing do they mostly offer. They’ll tell you they have everything, but insist on knowing what they mostly offer.
- Within the connected areas ask them the approximate skiing times to get from one resort to another, and back: it can seriously affect your day – and how tiring it might be.
- Ask them if skiing guides available who can show you early in your visit the general shape of the place. Many of the chalet owners and hotels offer this service – not teaching, just showing you around.
- When are the school holidays? In France they go on for weeks. Lift queues can be horrendous. Outside of them, you can often just walk on. And remember, in some European countries lift queue etiquette and politeness is conspicuous by its absence; France is one of them.
- Consider less popular countries that don’t have inter-connected valleys – Slovenia (home of Elan skis) has some nice small resorts; Bulgaria has more than you might think and inexpensive.
Kirchburg: €€ and just down the road from Kitzbuehel
My personal favorite? Baqueira in the Spanish Pyrenees. Two hour connection from Toulouse airport. Nicest folk you’ll ever meet (I go to the Hotel Tuc Blanc, and I’m not paid to say so). Watch out for school holidays though, it’s just across the border from France, but the Catalans queue politely.
Baqueira, the author’s favorite.
One Last Tip.
Never do “the last run down”! Everyone wants to get one more “last run” in. They do it on the return to the valley.
Don’t. They’re all tired; they’re skiing at their worst; there are crowds of them; the trails down lower are worn out or slushy. If you want “one last run” stay higher (the areas they’ve just left!) have better snow, fewer people, quieter mountains, and go down to the valley on the lift.
Hotel Tuc Blanc, author’s fav hotel in Baqueria.
Skiing Weatherman: Pattern Is Relatively Quiet
Fresh Snow in Cali. Mild Temps Next Week.
Last week’s installment touched upon the fight we usually see in March between lingering cold to the north and advancing spring warmth from the south. The fight usually takes the form of storminess, where it only a matter of whether there is enough cold air in the mix to produce snow instead of that other stuff. And yet here we are in the first week of March with something resembling a mini snow drought over the eastern half of the country. There hasn’t been a significant widespread snowfall in a couple of weeks and aside from northern New York and northern New England, where there have been one or two light snowfalls across in recent days, surfaces have morphed into “machine groomed” or, when temps rise above freezing, “loose granular.” Fear not, though. I hoped that a storm late this week would turn the corner and hit the Northeast, but a cold northwesterly flow has suppressed that idea well to the south. By no means has the East seen its last snowfall, but the next sizable one will come after a turn to milder weather during the week of the 8th. Here is a forecast for the jet stream level on the 11th that illustrates the cause of the warm-up.
If you follow the lines around the burnt orange center in a clockwise fashion, you can see that the air mass that flows into locations east of the Mississippi originates over the Southwest, where temperatures are running above normal. At the same time stamp, the following surface map shows a high pressure center off the coast of New England.
Following the lines clockwise around the blue “H” indicates a broad, low level mild southwesterly flow reaching the Great Lakes to New England. So, look for a shift to softer, spring-like surfaces in these areas next week.
The flip side of these ridges at the surface and aloft are the upper troughs and surface low centers that will be moving through the West next week. The air flow is around troughs is counter clockwise, and if you look at the first map and picture the western trough sliding down the coast from Washington to southern California, you can see that a broad onshore flow of moisture will immediately precede the arrival of the center of circulation, which is a great recipe for fresh snow in the Cascades and Sierra ranges. The highest totals will come from central and southern Sierra resorts, where the core of the trough will pass overhead midweek. Farther north it will be offshore. Later next week, the weakening trough will swing through the southern Rockies, where lighter snow will fall but refresh surfaces.
Back to the East. The pattern is progressive, so the warming will be transient. Here is a jet stream forecast for the 15th that shows a cold trough returning to the Midwest and East.
That setup will help preserve snow and produce fresh snow at times and there are signs that the colder pattern will dominate the second half of the month. More on that next week.
REGIONAL HIGHLIGHTS:
Pac NW/B.C.:
After a heavy late week dump in B.C., lighter snows fall this weekend in the Cascades. Periodic light snows during the week of the 8th.
Central and southern Sierra:
Fresh snow as well as wind this weekend for Tahoe. Snowy much of the week of the 8th for all Cali resorts.
Rockies:
Turning colder next week with light to moderate snows across the north. Weakening upper trough brings light midweek snows in southern Rockies.
Midwest:
Seasonably cold weekend and milder next week. Best shot at snow later next week across far northern Minnesota and Michigan.
Northeast:
Cold weekend with temps moderating by midweek. Transition back to colder pattern gets underway next weekend with potential messy storm.
Mid-Atlantic/Southeast:
Midwinter temps this weekend; spring skiing develops next week. Colder air returns week of the 15th.
Question For You: Risk Rating
Are You A Hucker, Ripper, Park Rat, Or Just A “Sick” Planker?
This you?
Sorry for the jargon. This week, we’d like to explore on which end of the risk spectrum our readers reside. We have a sense that some readers have slowed down, taken down the speed a notch or two, search for corduroy on on sunny days, and switched to Blues and Greens. On the other hand, we know for a fact that some readers regularly race, seek double Blacks, huck off jumps, go outside the ropes, and generally find fire in their skis.
Question For You: So which are you? Use this scale to rate yourself:
1 is risk lover, jumper, fast, ski whatever, go-go-go, chute flyer.
5 is graceful carver of the wide, groomed Blues and Greens, nice, rhythmical arcs, slow-ish, and in control.
Since this is an unscientific and statistically insignificant survey, make up your own criteria for 2-3-4 on the rating scale.
It will be interesting to see how our readership sees itself.
Or is this you?
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