Latest Snow Conditions

EARLY SEASON SNOW CONDITIONS - NOVEMBER 2009

There’s lots more snow needed to kick start the 2009/10 season and fingers crossed we’ll be getting plenty to build a base before Christmas. After encouraging reports of early season snowfall, the prospects for early season skiing in Europe are unexciting.

At this time of year it’s unwise to rely on “best case” snow depths statistics reported by resorts. Trust your eyes not your ears, and check out as many web cams as possible. We spent the weekend doing that for you.

Snow conditions in many parts of the Alps have been quite mild in recent weeks. Snow cover is patchy on the upper slopes of almost all resorts (glacier resorts excepted) and on lower slopes and in the resorts there is little if any snow at all visible even in high altitude villages like Arosa at 1,800m.

Snow almost invariably comes earlier in North America with numerous main resorts already open and reporting modest yet adequate snow depths in Colorado, Utah and California and most other US resorts steadily accumulating snow and ready to open over the next 2-3 weeks.

Right now, or 22 November to be more precise, the best snow conditions according to web cams and snow depth reports are in Canada where the Whistler press machine is already reporting record snowfall. Alberta ski resorts are reporting good conditions at Banff Mt Norquay (40-50cm), Lake Louise (60-93cm) and Jasper Marmot Basin (101-173cm). In British Columbia there’s great powder skiing in Whistler (0-244cm) and Sun Peaks (0-90cm), while resorts like Fernie, Mt Washington (80cm) and other smaller resorts such as Revelstoke, Kicking Horse and Panorama have yet to open

Approximately 100,000 of Britain’s 1.25 million skiers and boarders travel each year to ski North America and of those that do, 80% choose Canada as their preferred destination for skiing and boarding. With this in mind and, given that Canada has the best early season snow conditions, here are some of the best deals we have found for skiing Canada this winter.