Hi,

I have no issue with the fact this winter season to date has been poorer than some. Also I fully appreciate that some people are constrained by limited time, budgets and opportunities to make the most of what might be available.

I do take issue with people putting up posts (not on this thread) along the lines of "if only the ski centres / government would do more" and especially anything along the lines of "I've paid good money and expect a better service."

Nowadays there is so much information available to point anyone at the slightest opportunity of having a slide. From my experience of 42 seasons - you just have to make what you can of the snow available in Scotland.

Glass half full or glass half empty?

When I arrived in Courchevel 1650 on 8th Jan it was cold but incredibly brown. There was only one run back to the village which was all made man snow. There was limited skiing all over the 3 Valleys and even Val Thorens was not fully open.
But it basically snowed all week from Tuesday on with over 1m of the stuff coming down. By the end of the week we were skiing in thigh deep powder. I hoping for a transformation similar to that in Scotland over the next couple of weeks!

So am I but I think we may be hoping in vain. It's not looking good for the next few weeks.

Indeed Snow Weasel,
Ironically, prior to you arriving at Courcheval, I had 4 weeks of enjoyment a few valleys to the SE, courtesy of Le Retour d'Est.
Seek and you shall find.
[snowheads.com]

there is certainly precipitation within the first week of Feb....freezing level is the key though...Glencoe, Nevis and Cairgorm may get something restarted high up

but it will change with each run of the model...but 10th would be earliest possible even it temps play ball

still plenty time for snow...this time of year can be dodgy, we just usually have the odd day under our belts already with a bit of base down (which we dont)



Be Nice to Skiers, they have it hard enough already

I usually reckon that you get a poor season similar to this year once every 4-5 years. As has been commented, the last was 2011/2012, with 2006/2007 before that, so we were probably due a bad one, frustrating though it is. I'm just hopeful that by the time the next bad one rolls around somebody (GS ?) will have put in a more extensive snow making system capable of riding out the poor conditions.

Alan, out of interested how much snow making time would there have been over the past month with a modern system and would it have been enough?

On a secondary point, Winterberg (skiing mostly between 700 and 800m altitude) in NW Germany is reporting good conditions, with 24/25 lifts running and "28 slopes open with man made snow". I think they have a pretty heavy duty snow making system. The nearby resort of Willengen was looking pretty snowy when I watched the ski jumping on Eurosport yesterday. Far more so that some of the alpine resorts. So you never know what the weather is going to do.

Do El Ninos affect maritime climate/odds of snow much up here? We had a big one in the late 90s and then a long spell of crap winters, we just had an even bigger one, are we likely to see another stretch of the same? Or is that not really something that we can draw inference from?

Unfortunately the AWS at the SSC hut has failed and it's not possible to get any parts from it, but TechnoAlpin are collecting data at the same height from the old chairlift platform.

However, we can see on the CML webcam that what snow was made earlier this month in the lowermost part of the Cas Gunbarrel is still there. The Upper Cas isn't far from complete, it's been in a similar state all month. Therefore it's a fair assumption that an installed snowmaking system on Coire Cas and the Carpark Run would have allowed the Cas Tow to run with riding to the Daylodge on the Carpark Run through most of January with few days lost to wind/weather.

Yep, it just depends on how much each blower would cost, and to run. And then offset that with an open resort compared to what we've had so far this season - which is basically nothing. A day like today would have been full with some decent man mad snow. So £35 per ticket * ???? skiers just for one day.

All depends how much it costs to run the blowers per day as to whether its worth offsetting cost against the number of people who buys tickets, staff wages, running costs etc.

granted you would expect the snow to stick around for more than a day if you chose the right window for snow making, then could actually see more people interested from further afield travel for a slide about.