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Originally Posted By: MikePow
hijack somewhat

Snow forecast here in my part of Wales for Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, so a chance for me to get my season report up and running.

Best conditions I've skied in Wales, and it looks set to continue through January. Not a bad winter to be home smile

Vertical here is:

Pen-y-Fan peak down to the Nant Sere river 360 m
(this is the steepest stuff)

Pen-y-Fan peak down to the Llyn Cwm Llwch (lake) 330 m
(the most scenic)

Corn Du peak down to the car park 439 m
(this is the home run)

8 days skiing so far this winter smile

Oh and the apres is top notch. Aberdare is known as the Las Vegas of the Valleys. wink



worthless without pics, stop talking and start taking biggrin
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Originally Posted By: MikePow
Having skied on 5 continents I'll take quality over quantity every day.

I value your oppinion, MikePow. So you think powder in Japan is actually better? Because I see a lot of North American resorts claiming champagne powder. And I'm no snow consistency expert but I'm sure lots of the powder I've skied this season hasn't been champagne, maybe not even cava.

Double typo on the Chamonix vert, oops... 2,8002 meters should read 2,808 meters. Why don't they build a little tower at the top to ski down from and call it 3,000?
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Tripler all that vertical is awesome but it's not like you go to the top lift and ski to the base every run. And conditions generally vary enormously over the vertical. Even at the highest European resorts average snowfalls over a season are considerably less than in Japan. A few resorts in the US get similar total amounts and quality of snow as here but they're up at nose bleed altitudes and all the snow comes in big storms with reasonably long periods of fine weather in between. The resorts like Mt Bachelor which can receive far more snow than we do here have a very maritime snowpack and overall snow quality is nowhere near as good. For number of powder days per season I think Japan (well at least here in Niseko razz ) is pretty hard to beat.

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Originally Posted By: tripler
Originally Posted By: MikePow
Having skied on 5 continents I'll take quality over quantity every day.

I value your oppinion, MikePow. So you think powder in Japan is actually better? Because I see a lot of North American resorts claiming champagne powder. And I'm no snow consistency expert but I'm sure lots of the powder I've skied this season hasn't been champagne, maybe not even cava.


I've been fortunate to ski many of the recognised 'powder capitals' of the skiing world, for example Las Lenas, St Anton, Fernie, Alagna, Alta, Engelberg, and had fabulous conditions at all of them.

But nowhere has provided the quantity, quality, consistency, and frequency as Hokkaido for me.

I will gladly substitute powder for vertical or challenge of terrain.
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Originally Posted By: Creek Boy
Originally Posted By: MikePow
hijack somewhat

Snow forecast here in my part of Wales for Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, so a chance for me to get my season report up and running.

Best conditions I've skied in Wales, and it looks set to continue through January. Not a bad winter to be home smile

Vertical here is:

Pen-y-Fan peak down to the Nant Sere river 360 m
(this is the steepest stuff)

Pen-y-Fan peak down to the Llyn Cwm Llwch (lake) 330 m
(the most scenic)

Corn Du peak down to the car park 439 m
(this is the home run)

8 days skiing so far this winter smile

Oh and the apres is top notch. Aberdare is known as the Las Vegas of the Valleys. wink



worthless without pics, stop talking and start taking biggrin


I'm close smile
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My view...

Loved the village of Zermatt.

The cuisine was pretty dang lovely - although I stacked on about 10 kilo's with all the cheese and chocolate and beer!

 

But for the snow riding I would take Niseko every single day.

 

The snow conditions were more consistently hard packed to icy, and the pistes were very very skier centric - lots of narrow and steep cat tracks, and lots of rolling hills or flats. There was plenty of really lovely board riding to be had as well, but in comparison...well - today I did the Holiday for the first time and my response at the end was 'well that [bleep]ing sucked! It reminded me of Switzerland!' It was not all flats though, I do recall going down a very steep black run. If it was here in Niseko - might have been enjoyable - but it was SO hard packed [read: icey] that I couldn't even get an edge enough to stand back up when I fell, and ended up sliding down on my butt totally out of control for the entire length of the run. Saw a few others end up in the same boat too.

 

And even though I have a picture of me standing under the 4400m sign you could not always ski/board the whole way - into Cervinia, Italy was probably the longest run I did the entire time - and that was quite a trek, and quite lovely.

 

Would I go to Zermatt again. SURE.

If I was going to spend my hard earned and buy a ski shack would I buy in Zermatt? Hell no! Niseko? You betcha!

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if you let a container fill with snow and divide its weight (minus the container's weight) by its volume, does that tell you the quality of the snow? ie. the less weight per volume, the better it is. Or is champagne powder something else?

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And the reason no resort does it?

 

First gues, they don't want to be able to do an empiricaql comparison, far better to keep the slanging matches going, the "mine's better than yours" arguments. Why? Because the "best" will win and the rest will likely lose in terms of skier days etc.

 

Besides, is it a BAD thing that there's differences of opinion?

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dammit. I slept in and missed out snowboarding today. Not much is happening in my neck of the world. Maybe 5cm last night. My locals runs are about 30~40 cm. machine snow, old snow, coating of fresh with icy patches here and there. Still I'm sure you will all agree, it's better to be out there! Got really spoilt early in the season on the glaciers but not happening in my neighborhood. I think I'll head off to St. Anton for a few days. Once you have a taste of nice pow, I think it's so true that quality matters. It's great when the runs are longer, that's for sure, but not when it's wet and flat.

I like Austria and Italy. I will check out Swiss.

Don't really see what's the big deal about all the snow in Europe news cos it's not happening in south Germany at the mo!

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typical of Scotland, when there actually is snow in the resorts, they can't open because the roads are closed!! Cairngorms is reporting that due to 15ft snowdrifts blocking the road, they can't even get on mountain!! Think Yuzawa needs to lend them some of those snowblowers in the pictures!! lol

thank god I moved to Japan!! smile

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Yeah Mina....its not that the season is that short its that its sporadic! In years gone by they were still skiing in the cairngorms well into Easter. The snow usually doesn't hang around long and they have to wait for another dump but this year its stayed, so the base is well made and they are saying its the best conditions for 15 years

 

Dunno how far down Hokkaidough, it didn't say in the report.

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Originally Posted By: Tubby Beaver
Yeah Mina....its not that the season is that short its that its sporadic! In years gone by they were still skiing in the cairngorms well into Easter. The snow usually doesn't hang around long and they have to wait for another dump but this year its stayed, so the base is well made and they are saying its the best conditions for 15 years. Although there have been some closures of slopes due to high avalanche danger.

Dunno how far down Hokkaidough, it didn't say in the report.
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  • 4 months later...

Scotland has done well this year

 

Hundreds of skiers and snowboarders have enjoyed snow on CairnGorm Mountain over the bank holiday weekend.

 

The ski resort, which has enjoyed an exceptionally busy season, had an inch (2cm) of snowfall on Saturday night.

 

A spokeswoman for CairnGorm Mountain said the winter sports facilities would stay open for weekends in May if demand remained high.

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yep, best winter season for 15 or 20 years apparently. Although its not uncommon for hardy skiers to hike the Cairngorms and get some turns in on isolated snow fields in June and July.

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