J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by ir12daveor

I think you meant to post this image for % snowfall.



Not quite 200% in Engelberg (it is near Disentis though!), but still f'ing good.

Had a friend in Engelberg on the weekend he said it was great. We were getting knee deep freshies in Davos. Not a bad start to the season.

My recommendations would be Arosa or Lenzerheide. Both easily accessible from Zurich and perfect for Intermediates. Lenzerheide is a bigger resort then Arosa with skiing on both sides of the valley. Arosa is a bit more the picture postcard Swiss town set at the end of a valley.

Engelberg as others have suggested is a bit steep on a few of the runs. In my opinion it's actually pretty rubbish for on-piste skiing and much better suited to freeriding. If it gets busy (which it do at the weekends when you are there) there are bottle necks at the lifts from Truebsee to Jochpass, Truebsee to Stand and from Stand to Titlis.

Also worth considering might be Davos. I can vouch that the snow conditions are amazing for the time of year at the moment.

What I find interesting and also supports what I see in the resorts is this.

On another forum I frequent for people who live fulltime in Switzerland the exact same poll was done. Of 221 respondents only 30% never wear a helmet. 70% always or sometimes wear one. 67.5% always wear one!

Anecdotally this supports what I see in the resorts. People who do not wear helmets are in the minority now(a very small minority!). The people I see who are not wearing helmets are nearly always tourists!

First face shots of the new season today. Surprisingly good snow for so early in the season.

0! It snowed here this morning.

Ok Ise, lets get your unique view on this one.

Currently Saas-Fee is reporting 186cm of snow at 3500m. Interestingly they are reporting 0cm at 3100m.
http://www.saas-fee.ch/en/snowrep.cfm

If we look at the webcams for Gornergrat or Rothorn in Zermatt we can clearly see that there is nowhere near that level of snow 400m lower then that. Now I'd expect a bit of difference in snowfall over about 400m of altitude, but based on the weather we've been having lately I find somewhere in the region of 1.5m difficult to accept. Granted I know the glacier up there is very thick (can't remember the exact figures)

The snowsport report for Zermatt says 173cm at 2900m (Even if the 2900m is a mistake and they mean 3900m its a big diffence) when we can clearly see on the webcams 200m higher that there is nowhere near that amount of snow!

I accept your point that at these locations they are not measuring overall glacier thickness. I do realise how thick these glaciers are but there is a some degree of playing with the figures involved here somehow.

http://www.zermatt.ch/de/page.cfm/service/Wispo
http://www.zermatt.ch/en/page.cfm/interactive/webcams

I'm not sure where you are taking your figures from, but I assure you that the resorts quoted figures in those resorts have differed substantially from the figures shown by the SLF data stations. I know for a fact that I have seen early season figures that were a long way above the seasons accumulated snowfall given by SLF. Where or how they measure it is a different issue but the glacier resorts that I have experience of tend to embelish their snow figures on the glacier. I've seen the figures on both the Engelberg and Laax sites, on the my Switzerland site and in local newspapers which drastically differ from what is on the SLF site. I also happen to be up close to those altitudes in non glacier areas as late as mid November and can see what the new accumulation is. The fact that its snowing down to 1500m today doesn't have anything to do with it, the weather can get warm again and the newly fallen snow could melt away to about 3000m within a couple of weeks.

I've been here in Switzerland for winters for 10 years and year round for 6 years. I know what I have experienced and the truth differs from the reality at a number of resorts that I have visited.

I'll agree that the resort reporting cleared up quite a bit a few years back when MySwitzerland.com apparently threatened to drop resorts if they falsely reported snow depths on their resorts. Now at least in my area it only appears to be glacier resorts that have this exageration and only on the glacier. Funnily enough a neighbouring resort that goes nearly to the same altitude can have 2m less snow the only difference being no glacier! :-o

ise wrote:

ir12daveor wrote:
That very much depends on the glacier. Engelberg and Laax post 3-4m of snow at the start of the season every year and there is no way that much snow has accumulated yet. In these cases they are measuring on the glacier. Whether they are measuring right down to rock or not I don't know, but it is certainly glacier and not new accumulated snow.

Average glacier depths in their accumulation zones around Switzerland are 70m as I already pointed out. From that you know for certain a snow report of 3m isn't the glacier depth.

I'm not able to speculate what a hypothetical snow report may or may not be measuring but if I saw a report in December for, as an example, Zermatt, telling there was 2m of snow on the glacier I would know that was new snow from that winter.

So when you see Engleberg reporting depths in December of around a 1.5m (that's the actual recorded, reported historical figure) you're seeing new snow that's fallen in that winter.

I can't see why that's surprising, it's snowing right now, the zero isotherm is beginning to settle below 3000m so higher glaciers are accumulating snow. It would surprising if there wasn't a couple of metres of snow accumulated by December. In fact, that relatively low figure of 1.5m for Engelberg reflects a fairly poor start to the last season. It's the same for the 1.7m that Laax reported in December last year. In point of fact, neither Engelberg nor Laax ever reported more than 3m for the whole of the previous season, the highest measure was 3m or so in April which represents the season accumulation.

And, physically, practically, how is it measured? By putting a pole in the snow of the glacier at the start of the winter, or more likely around now, and seeing how far up the pole the snow goes.

The first reports for Engelberg last season were 0cm lower and 45cm upper in November then 48cm/123cm in December, there's nothing I find surprising about that.

ise wrote:While glacier mass balance is decreasing in many places I don't we've quite arrived at a point where the depth in the accumulation zone is down to three metres. Glacial depths in Switzerland are around 70m on average IIRC.

That very much depends on the glacier. Engelberg and Laax post 3-4m of snow at the start of the season every year and there is no way that much snow has accumulated yet. In these cases they are measuring on the glacier. Whether they are measuring right down to rock or not I don't know, but it is certainly glacier and not new accumulated snow.