The ski season usually runs from late November to late-April at Alaska’s largest ski resort, Alyeska, located just 45 minutes from Anchorage in the Chugach Mountains and the resort town of Girdwood. (Just keep in mind that great snowfalls in previous years don’t 100% guarantee great snow this season.) “Even if the snow is really bad, we rarely get complaints as everyone just ends up having a great time anyway.”įrom Europe and Japan to Alaska and Utah, read on for some of the highest likelihoods for snowy slopes for a ski vacation this winter. “All that matters is what the snow is like the moment you are putting on your boots,” she said. “It’s easy to obsess about snow before you arrive,” she said, and for some people, that obsession starts months in advance of a trip. Plaskett recommends places such as Zermatt, Val d’Isère and Méribel – popular ski resort towns in Switzerland and France – that have charming villages as well as access to higher-altitude slopes. All that matters is what the snow is like the moment you are putting on your boots. It’s easy to obsess about snow before you arrive. But charm comes from being old and traditional, and they didn’t build villages right up in the high-altitude slopes hundreds of years ago, nor did they design those villages around ski resorts.” “Everyone always wants village charm and high altitude and ski-in, ski-out. “We are really careful about what we say to clients when they ask for snow-sure resorts,” said Sarah Plaskitt of ski travel website Scout Ski. However, snowmaking has a “substantial carbon footprint,” he pointed out.Īs with any especially weather-dependent trip, balancing priorities can be tricky. “As a general rule, the highest-altitude resorts – including several in the Colorado Rockies and the Western Alps – will have the most reliably cold weather and the longest snow seasons, since they’re less dependent on periodic Arctic intrusions in order to stay cold enough for snow,” said Henson.Īnd while high-altitude areas can suffer from prolonged dry periods, the ability to make snow can lessen the impact on ski conditions, he said. Planning a ski vacation requires some careful consideration for optimal conditions. This state that booms in summer might be even better under the snow “The world’s warming winters are especially devastating for ski areas at lower elevations or in other settings that are just barely warm enough,” Henson said. And a small ski area in Le Sambuy, France, recently closed for good because of a lack of snow. Once the world’s highest ski resort at over 17,000 feet (5,180 meters), Bolivia’s Chacaltaya now sits abandoned after a glacier melted away. In some ski areas, the effect has been drastic. “In the United States, winters are now 2.3☏ milder than a century ago,” said Bob Henson, a meteorologist and journalist with Yale Climate Connections. “Although heat waves are a huge risk with summer warming, winters are warming even more dramatically than summers in many areas,” he said. Last winter, ski resorts in places such as Austria, Vermont, Switzerland and Spain’s Sierra Nevada region had unexpected closures because of unseasonably warm winter temperatures. The Northern Hemisphere’s middle latitudes (the area north of the tropics and south of the Arctic) are seeing the most notable decline. Less snow is falling worldwide, according to analysis of data gathered since 1973 by the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |