Ski conditions in Switzerland - Come for the suntan but definitely not for the skiing!

Hello to all who have been thinking of planning late ski holidays. Today in Vevey we have a temperature of about 24 celcius. It's been unseasonably warm since January, with very little snowfall in the Alps (about 5 or 6 good snowfalls all winter). This has led to the current conditions where most resorts that don't have glacier skiing are either closed or are offering minimum pistes to be open for the unsuspecting foreign travellers to the region.

Unfortunately many of the large resorts in the region have become quite dishonest with their website promises of "guaranteed snow" such as portesdusoleil.com or Verbier, who have chosen to black out a good part of the Verbier village webcam so as to only show the mountain peaks.

If you are considering coming for some late-season skiing in Switzerland, either plan for some limited spring skiing on the Saas-Fee glacier or at Andermatt.

Being a resident of the region, I do feel quite bad for those unsuspecting tourists who pay a lot of money for ski holidays only to discover unacceptable conditions. Adding to these conditions, there have also been record numbers of ski-related injuries because of the rock-hard ice and poor snow conditions.

Better to save your money for another year, or come and get some sun by the lake.

For some good "honest webcams" check out:

www.swisswebcams.ch

Thanks Dan,
It has been a poor season snow wise, which is a real disapointment both for holidaymakers and local commerce. A ludicrously late Easter has added to the difficulties this year - one of the main holiday periods being so late puts real pressure on resorts to stay open when they would have normally closed 2 or more weeks earlier.
The people I feel sorry for ar the not too savvy tourist who believe the "late offer" and think that there will be lovely snow just because bookings are being accepted.
In many years this would be the last real weekend of the season, not trying to suggest it is still winter for another 3 or 4 weeks.

Based on my days skiing today, in Switzerland, here are some photos. You can make up your own minds.

I skied between 2900m and 1570m, village height. I'll be taking some new skis up tomorrow.

Hello Bandit,

Nice pics. Could you share with us where you were skiing today? I'm assuming you were skiing between Les Gentianes (mid-station at Verbier) and the village. Is that right?

I was up at Nendaz for a week two weeks ago, and I'm sure you'd agree the conditions are very patchy in many places. Even back then the lack of snow was such that even with a 4 Vallées pass, we were only able to ski mainly Verbier, or have to hike back over a kilometer if we wanted to venture over towards Veysonnaz or Thyon 2000.

By the way, below is this week's forecast for Verbier with continuing unseasonably warm temperatures:

http://www.meteosuisse.admin.ch/web/fr/meteo/previsions_en_detail/previsions_locales.html?language=fr&plz=verbier&x=0&y=0

I'm in Grimentz.

This is a link to our local lift company video page. The latest entry is for March 31st.

http://www.rma.ch/anniviers/suisse/ski-valais/videos-anniviers.html

Local news on 1st April carried details of what the press termed a "gigantic" avalanche covering an area 500metres by 500metres. I see the site above Ayer from my lounge window. A local blog has the best photos, and a TSR video report. Nicole goes on to say that the avalanche proves that we still have enough snow in the Anniviers.
Not forgetting that 3 skiers died in the slide.

http://blog.i-g.ch/index.php?post/2011/04/01/La-montagne-est-belle

Yes it's Spring skiing conditions, but so are most April's. It was quite cool at the top lift yesterday afternoon.

Hi Bandit,
Thanks very much for the video link. I especially enjoyed the one with the man plus gun chasing the ski-ing rabbit :D

You're very lucky you still have decent snow :D

Ally

At Verbinet they publish twice a week very accurate description of what the conditions and the outlook are like and provide links to meteo reports, and some of the webcams show village too, though I don't understand the point of showing the village that has been snowless since January. Pistes even now are holding up and you can get few runs if you are up early enough, and from noon it's a good time to sit on a sunny terrase with a beer.

Bad season for snow, no-one argues that. ironically, now it snows every week, though not much and with the freezing level at 3000 meters it doesn't last long. Spring skiing is not very enjoyable this season due to lack of snowfall over winter. Still, I had a couple of hours on Saturday and we did the run from top of Mont Fort all the way down Gentianes-Tortin and it was quite awesome. The run back to the village after High Five was over wasn't awesome at all, but it was stil skiable.

April skiing can be quite sketchy even in better seasons - unless it's on the flat glaciers, so people who are booking that late in the season probably know what to expect anyway, so they won't be too disappointed.

To be honest, I had the suspicion the season wouldn't be great for snow. Summer was bad, maybe 6 hot sunny weeks in total, and it rained weekly from end of July. Last time, 4 years ago we had similarly bad summer which was followed by a fairly bad winter - it was raining on New Years Eve with day temperatures at around 15C. Easy to remember because it was the summer of WC2006, so it happened again after another World Cup as it probably happens from time to time and will definitely happen again. Not the end of the world.

Can't comment about Verbier but the quoted snow depths for the Portes Du Soleil were a little out of step with my experience of them a couple of weeks ago.

The snow was melting fast on both the French & Swiss sides to the point that many runs were brown with rocks & grass poking through and they were taking away some of the Piste Bashers as there wasn't enough snow to bash.

I don't think 2011 will go down as a great snow year in the French or Swiss Alps.

Some of the Austrian areas have been fine as have some of the Italian Alps.

I guess they can't all be vintage years. A little realism with snow depths might not be a bad thing as many will now take snow depth readings with a pinch of salt.