Spring Skiing

In the Northern Hemisphere, the ‘commercial’ or peak time ski season stretches between the Christmas and Easter holidays but many alpine resorts open well before Christmas and close after Easter.

Of course, Easter falls at different times according to the moon cycle. Sometimes Easter day falls as early as the last Sunday in March or as late as the last Sunday in April. This can have serious consequences on the skiing industry.

Because most skiers associate Easter with the end of the season, an early Easter can mean a very quiet resort for the rest of April. Great for the people that do go there, but not so good for the tour operators and travel companies! In some cases though, if Easter is late and the snow does start to melt, then the lack of snow can become an issue.

The key to Spring skiing is to choose high altitude resorts, preferably with a glacier as back up. In recent years, the European Alps have seen bumper end of season snowfalls that ensure good conditions right throughout April. It is not uncommon for there to be fantastic snow conditions at over 2000 meters of altitude going into May, but the resort has closed as there are simply no skiers around.

Most European alpine resorts start to close in mid April and some stay open until the last weekend in April. The 2010 winter season in Scotland has been the best in 30 years and they predict skiable terrain well into May.

European alpine resorts for Spring skiing include:

Austria: St Anton, Lech, Zurs

Switzerland: Verbier, Zermatt, Les Diablarets

France: Tignes, Val Thorens, La Plagne, Chamonix, Alpe d’Huez

Italy: Cervinia, Courmayer

If you want to visit other resorts during April, then just check out the conditions and weather forecasts a couple of weeks before and go from there. It is crucial to look at the resorts official website to check out the closing date of the ski lifts because they rarely extend this date, because of good snow conditions.

Read Part 2 of this Blog article where I describe what conditions you can expect when Spring skiing and some stuff about ski touring.