We are looking to book time off for next year with a view to at least "hitting" a few snow-sureish dates.

I was wondering if there is a resource that shows a breakdown of number of lifts open by date (Glenshee, Glencoe, Lecht & Nevis) over a previous few year and,or do any veteran sliders have a gut feel when when snow hits the ground and the wind drops?

Our experience suggests from late feb Glenshee & Lecht get going (Glencoe can be open but often seems "blown out"). From Mid march Glencoe is a banker up till they run out of customers.

Any thoughts appreciated.

Over the long term March is probably the most promising month, best chance of decent cover and good conditions, while less likely to be blasted off the mountain. However there's no period that's an absolute cert! Just to illustrate that point not a single lift turned for snowsports in the whole of March 2012 at any of the 5 areas...

If you were booking time off now with a view to increasing hill time in the winter season, I'd probably take a bit of a scatter gun approach to be honest and take several days or couple of days here and there over a longer period. Depends how much travelling would be involved for you in doing that, but then you'd have less chance than having a complete blowout of your booked holiday time than if you booked one long stint.

On the other hand just watch the webcams and look out for those nasty 24 hour winter viruses!

My advice: make yourself favorable with your employer so you can ask for time of with a week or two of notice. Thats how ive managed to circumvent the situation over the past 4 or 5 years!

I'm looking forward to my retirement date, when that problem will be no more!

Thanks you all for your advice - we've taken the scatter gun approach with dates through February and March (April is in next years holiday allocation).

Now waiting for the first snows to appear on the web cams...