So it looks like we've had some great weather and plenty of snow. I've been away for a few weeks and just about to hit the slopes again.

The reports look good - does anyone have some feedback about their recent skiing adventures?

Mark

I can't report anything about skiing, I just want to mention that we wanted to go to Amden today to do some hiking .. and were turned back in Weesen.

Apparently it was all full at the top. So if you're thinking Amden, you might want to get up early or have some alternatives. (or know someone up there with parking )

Was skiing last weekend in Flumserberg and this weekend in both Hoch-Ybrig and Flumserberg.

Snow conditions are pretty good at both resorts .. though some icy patches where lots of ski traffic has lead to snow being scraped away on steep/popular slopes. Weather conditions were great - clear blue skies whereas it was grey fog all day at ground level.

The only drawback is volume of people on the slopes and hence vehicle traffic to the resorts. Unless you are at Flumserberg first thing to park, you'll be taking the bus up. There were large queues on Saturday evening coming out of the Sihltal and a lot of stop-start traffic on the main Zurich-Chur motorway on Sunday. I'd think about taking the train if you can. If you go first class, it's really nice to relax and put your feet up on the way home.


Gav

I was last weekend in Davos. Conditions were pretty good. The snow had been packed down into ice, and the covered with some freshly groomed snow, but on the whole it was pretty good. On Sunday we went to Jackobshorn and there was hardly anyone there - we heard from others that world+dog were at Parsenn and it was completely packed. On Monday we went to Parsenn and it wasn't crowded at all. Similiar snow conditions. I did hear that from my neighbour that it took him four hours to get back from Davos on Sunday evening! That's why I like to come back on Monday evening instead :-)

The best skiing at the moment seems to be first thing in the morning when the pistes are freshly prepared.

Looking forward to checking out Davos this Sunday/Monday again - looks like there was 7cm of new snow in the last 24 hours!

Mark

Just came back from Flumserberg (took the day off).

Absolutely fantastic. Really good snow conditions (new snow yesterday), horizon to horizon blue sky and not that many people around.

Plus, the new gondola link from Unterterzen has opened. Continuous 6-person gondolas direct to Tanenboden until 17:45. Brilliant, even if you are coming in a car it's worth stopping there and taking the gondola up. Such an improvement over the previous 2 small cablecars. If you are in a train it's really handy and now there is a limited S2 service direct (no changes) from Zuerich HB to Unterterzen. Travel time is something like an hour and a quarter, which is pretty reasonable.


Gav

I post a few photos and stuff to my Blog (below), there's a few places I get to but Gstaad is my local haunt. I also co-run the MySnowSports web site which has some ski stuff on it. More blogs are welcome though.

Just got back from Davos again today and wanted to report on a disturbing trend I've seen their recently - not grooming the pistes.

Now this might be dependant on what you are used to - maybe you think that I'm being a spoilt brat, but at Davos I'm used to seeing the pistes freshly prepared each morning. This year things seem to have been slipping...

Before I go on I should mention that a couple of years ago I spent a week in Chamonix, and was pretty unimpressed at the infrastructure there. There were a lot of stones in the piste - not much effort was put in with the snow machines in the rough spots (didn't see many snow machines at all) and grooming was something that seemed to be done twice a week, if that. Now the strange thing is that many people rave about Chamonix, which leads me to believe that some people have different experiences and this might lead to different levels of expectation...

So back to Davos... Last Monday the Parsennbahn was broken for the entire morning, and it's only 3 years old. Ok, I'm not going to go on and on about that point - technical faults can happen, and when they do nobody has any understanding for the poor bastard that has to fix it.

But when we got up to the top we found that absolutely nothing had been done in the way of grooming. The main piste that EVERYBODY skis on the entire day (Oberer Standard) wasn't prepared. In fact, it looked like it hadn't been prepared the day before that either. Not only that - but none of the pistes had been prepared at all! Now I can ski the moguls but I'm no fan of them... But this was what Oberer Standard was like! We did one run down, sat in the hut and decided that it just wasn't worth the effort and drove home. My god - I'm starting to sound like the Swiss now - they only ski in perfect conditions.

Let's hope this trend doesn't continue, but I'm not the only one that has noticed that Davos has been getting very slack lately with piste grooming. I'm considering writing to them and telling them that as a season pass holder I might be looking elsewhere next season (this isn't true - even with this trend I still think Davos offers much more in terms of quality and choice than other resorts)

If you ski somewhere else - are the pistes always groomed each morning or do you have to do mogul jumping combined with sliding on the icy bits?

Mark

Well, this year in Switzerland I've only been to Hoch Ybrig and Flumserberg - but both have been well groomed. Flumserberg especially seems to have had some effort put into it, as quite often there used to be lots of moguls etc with the heavy load it gets. This year, the pistes were in very good condition, even on busy days.


Gav

I also have a feeling that they might be putting in more effort for the weekends, but if they think that the weather will be bad, or people won't show up, or it is a day like a Monday that they might not bother. Problem is that there are still plenty of people there during the week - on their ski holidays. Have you ever been to those sites during the week? Mind you they tend to be much smaller, so the effort required to groom them wouldn't be as high.

It's just perspective, most Swiss pistes are over-prepared by many peoples standards with moguls ruthlessly eliminated. Stations in France and Austria have successfully implemented reduced preparation, it's time Switzerland allowed some more challenging terrain to develop, it might push their instructors a little as well

Interesting idea - "implemented reduced preparation" this turns it around and trys to sell it as a feature! I'm certainly not for grooming the entire mountain - Davos has many pistes which are deliberately not groomed and allowed to turn into mogul areas (and marked on the map as such). What I am talking about is the main piste where all the beginners ski. I'm a big fan of high speed carving, which isn't really possible when the piste looks like a train wreck I'm the sort of guy that goes up there really early in the morning so I can plant my tracks into the virgin piste

Ok - so I guess I should lower my expectations and await Switzerland to follow the trend of the others and implement "reduced preparation". It's a shame, give me over-prepared any day!

After 4 weeks of absolutely miserable weather we ventured out again to Davos last Sunday and Monday. Both days had superb weather - not too cold, not too warm and always sunny.

Piste conditions were excellent. Jakobshorn was quite icy in some patches (Sunday) but also crowded. Parsenn was really great on Monday - all pistes well prepared and not too crowded.

Let's hope the good conditions last!

You're having some sort of joke surely?

There's been some sensational conditions over the last month or so, some of the best snowfalls of the season, in fact of several seasons.

For the last 3 or 4 weekends I've tried to go the weather reports have been awful. There was one stretch where it is overcast and snowing for almost 2 weeks solid. Each time I'd check on the webcams and the same result - almost zero visibility.

Yes, there has been a tonne of snow, but I'm not a fan of skiing in poor visibility and/or snow (maybe I've just been here too long and am spoiled)

So last weekend was the first chance I got to get some nice weather. My comments apply to Davos and my weekends are Sunday-Monday, so it's possible that there has been a day or two of good weather that other people have managed to enjoy in the meantime.