Who do you believe? - Guy Ordway, Verbier.
Monday February 8, 2010 - Email this article to a friend

For some people 20cm of snow is powder heaven, for others it is little more than a dusting. Snow reporting is often pretty subjective. 

Facts contradict each other too. One slope may have deep snow with a good covering everywhere while another run, in the same resort, may have had it blown away by strong winds leaving exposed rocks and ice.

In Verbier this winter we had a pretty average start but recently it has been superb.  However many people out here on holiday didn't expect it and are surprised quite how good it is.

"The idea we get back in the UK from the press and ski web sites it that it hasn't been so good this winter, but looking around now it couldn't be further from the truth; conditions are amazing," one holidaymaker told me recently.

Last week we had a fall of around 25cm so whilst the off-piste was great, we were even catching fresh tracks down the pistes with the powder snow on a nicely groomed base.

It'd be easy to say that the resort really needed it, but talking to the guys at Powder Extreme,  an off piste ski school here in the resort, last week there were still plenty of fresh tracks to be found before the latest fall, you just needed to know a few secrets and where to look.

That said, nobody was upset to be woken by the sound of the snow ploughs hammering up and down their street.

It was a bit cloudy, but if you want to get any fresh tracks in Verbier sometimes you need to be prepared to do so without the ability to see much of the floor - wait till the sun comes out and it's all already tracked.

However, the cloud did have a habit of suddenly and unexpectedly breaking, giving brief windows where the views were stunning and you could look back up the hill and see what you'd just been skiing through.  And it was very cold - down to minus 26°C at the top of Mont Fort and cold enough for stories of frostbite kicking in for a few people.

The cold temperatures have played a significant role in keeping the snow so good this winter and I have never known a winter where we have had such cold temperatures.  None of that seems to have been conveyed properly though  - temperature is an indicator is not reported enough in my opinion, and far less understood, as people look at the statistics to get an impression of what it is actually like.

So was the recent snowfall the cure for a dodgy winter for snow?

Hell no;  simply because it's not been a dodgy winter for snow.

I think last season's unbelievable snow has slightly skewed everybody's memory of what a normal winter looks like, leaving everybody thinking it's normal to take a pair of fat rocker skis out into knee deep powder every weekend, and frankly that's just not what you get in Europe very often. 

But we're having a really good winter, with the odd storm like this one delivering a treat every couple of weeks, and piste conditions that are frankly amazing. We're not getting as much as last year, but that was the most snow the locals say they've had for ninety years.

But if you forget last year's epic snow falls, this season beats the hell out of most winters... Go and tell your friends.

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