Today, there’s are news about some problems in a ski resorts in the Dolomites, south sunny side of the Alps. No snow and people have surely booked their vacations months in advance.
When the sun shines on a winter weekend, one thing is certain: people are drawn to the slopes. Even in the Italian Dolomites at an altitude of around 2300 meters, many skiers wanted to make their turns on Saturday. But they sometimes had to wait a long time.
A long queue formed in front of a chairlift on Saturday. This is shown in pictures and videos published on social media. Hundreds of people had to queue for more than an hour in some cases. Due to the lack of snow, several slopes were closed and the chairlift was overloaded.
Skiers demand their money back
Because the temperatures were too high over the last few days, it was not possible to make snow. “So far, there have only been about six days with temperatures below freezing at our altitudes,” explained Marco Grigoletto, regional president of the ANEF ski association, to the Italian portal giornaletrentino.it
Some skiers announced on social media that they wanted their money back for their ski passes. Others argued that after the warm days, people should be aware that the slopes may be closed. People should check which slopes are open before they go skiing.
With rising global temperatures, it will happen sooner than later on the north side of the Alps (Switzerland). So, whoever worked on the sale of Crans-Montana to US investors should be recognized as a business genius. Find a sucker to sell a ski resort during global warming, this is a true Swiss hero saving investor’s money.
The issue here is that most lowlanders have headaches when going above 3000 meters above sea level. So, it may be still possible to find snow at higher elevations, but not paying customers.
Skiing is a bust here, too. Unless you like skiing on rocks with a bunch of cowboy 'boarders and crammed into the few runs. I heard the rescue heli go out 4 times yesterday, and there aren’t even any tourists yet. Even my die-hard neighbours admit that it’s now too dangerous to go up. No snow expected until the first week of January…
Edit: Just looked at the forecast. Next 5 days full sun 8 hours, 12C tomorrow, 8 thereafter. It will be a bloodbath. Sun until Christmas Eve.
Time to start roller-skiing! even more dangerous, but so much more fun. Or, even better, get some steel-knees, and emulate Candide Thovex… candide thovex audi commercial - Google Search
Plenty of snow here still, from the big dumps towards the end of November. There’s still around 50cm around the house where I didn’t clear it. Skied on Dec 6th, then again this past weekend for three days, perfectly adequate snow on everything that was open. At that point that did not include links from Morgins to le Corsets viw Champoussin, nor any of the Morgins-SuperChatel-Torgon area, but that’s all supposed be opening this coming weekend.
No more snow forecast in the next few days here but possibly some skirting south of us on Monday, so the Aosta valley resorts may benefit.
I spent yesterday (New Year’s Eve) skiing the Corviglia area of St Moritz.
Most well over 2500 metres. It was no problem to ski down to the Signalbahn car park at the end of the day at 1800m.
The pistes are well prepared with no rocks or stones. The snow is hard packed and soon became well-skied and had a layer of shaved powder in many areas. Conditions were not for beginners. It was very cold and windy, but completely sunny.
The Piz Nair area is closed and off-piste everywhere is grass and rocks.
The other problem with many lower resorts being closed or having very limited skiing is that the higher ones are jam packed with skiers with massive queues for lifts with long waits.
Yet the Christmas- New Year’s break is peak of the peak pricing for flights, accommodation and lift tickets.
We gave up skiing in this period and prefered skiing in January or early March.
Edit. I changed the tense above as I no longer ski. Although they have stopped I was on gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) agonists for over 5 years for my prostate cancer which caused weight gain, weakness and fatigue. Putting on the boots then climbing the stairs from the ski room would destroy me. Queues and crowds would kill me.
I doubt I will ski again given my weakness and age (70).
I always used to go in early January and was surprised to find the slopes empty. This year, I went skiing at Christmas for the first time. We were lucky to have a lot of sun. There was a moderate number of people and just enough snow.
Often the best time to ski for both people and pistes. Up until end January is usually decently quiet.
Seems to very much depend on resort. Certainly quieter tha last Xmas/New Year but that was exceptional but still busy in some places - locally to me I noticed (and avoided) Flumserberg.where the high capacity lifts coupled with only 1/3 the pistes being open meant the open pistes looked very overcrowded.