[SNOWHUNTER] Best In Snow

Snow.  We skiers and boarders can never get enough of it.  We spend the Autumn (if we live in the northern hemisphere) waiting for it to arrive.  Then after the initial thrill of those first falls each pre-season we want more, always more.

And we’re obsessed with how deep it is.  Of course it does need to reach a certain depth so that all the natural hazards are covered over.  If we’re planning a trip at Christmas or New Year it’s reassuring to hear the snow is lying at least half a metre deep by mid-December say.  Or if we’re travelling at Easter when the thaw might have set in it’s reassuring to know a resort is still reporting snow several metres deep at the end of winter so there’ll likely still be enough to ski to the bottom by the time we arrive.

(Picture Credit: St Anton am Arlberg.  Picture Top: Steamboat, Colorado)

But should we be so obsessed with quantity, isn’t it quality that matters – particularly when looking for off piste powder, but even for a fresh snow feel on the groomed slopes?

Yes, even though we can be so desperate that any old snow will do, given the choice we’d like several feet of light, fluffy powder that’s weightless on our skis or board and perfection to carve through.

After all too much snow can bring its problems – access roads may be closed, lifts buried if it’s too abundant, and there’s the increasing avalanche danger of course.

So which are the resorts around the world where you can cut your odds of finding high quality  snow?  Which ski areas are the ones where lots of perfect powder snow falls almost every ski season, almost without fail, so that your chance of finding fresh powder in abundance are far higher than the average? (Yes that ‘almost’ is a legally binding excuse-all in case they don’t deliver when you book to go there and you then try to sue me…)

Here are some top picks:

Niseko, Japan

Niseko on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, is regarded by snow fans as one of the greatest destinations on earth simply because not only does it get vast volumes of snow (averaging 17 metres per annum) the snow itself is superb powder.  The air that forms it is toasted bone dry as it travelling west over the earth’s largest land mass, then pops in to the sea of Japan to pick up the moisture before dumping down on Hokkaido.

This means that the snow here is typically much better than at Mt Baker, across the Pacific in Washington State, USA, which holds the world record for the most snow ever in one winter (29m –or over 90 feet – in 1999/2000) and for the average annual snowfall (16m), but the snow there tends to be wetter, as there’s no land mass for the air to dry out over with most of the precipitation coming from the west.

Is there a downside?  Well, it can snow for weeks on end so visibility isn’t always perfect; and sometimes there’s so much light fluffy snow skiers report they sink down so far they find it rather alarming – hence references to needing a snorkel or swimming in snow.

Yllas, Lapland, Finland

A good bet for good snow quality is usually to head north towards the Arctic circle.  True you may be skiing under floodlights in mid-winter, true the verticals aren’t very big, true the total amount of snow that falls each winter isn’t that big compared to most resorts in the Alps, let alone the Rockies and finally, true it can be very, very cold; but those low temperatures help the snow to fall as a very fine mist and accumulate as feather light powder.  It also helps the snow maintain that light, dry structural integrity rather than getting in to the more common “freeze-thaw” cycle as temperatures move up and down above and below freezing at many other resorts at more southerly latitudes.

Utah, USA

Ski resorts right along the Rocky Mountain massif from Canada to Colorado claim to have great powder, and often they do, but the ski resorts of Utah tend to have the edge and, with typical American modesty, have trademarked the phrase “The Greatest Snow on Earth” to underline the point. It’s a trademark that some Japanese resorts might care to challenge, but so far only Barnum’s Circus, who hold the original ‘Greatest Show on Earth’ trademark (unsuccessfully) have.

It’s hard to choose between which Utah ski resort has the best powder as they’re all known for abundant quantities of the stuff, which is created in a similar way to the Japanese variety, although this time the air is first scooped up from the Pacific BEFORE being carried west and toasted over the dry plains before being forced to rise rapidly as it hits the barrier of the Rockies, causing it to drop its precious white gold – an abundance of seemingly weightless fine powder snow.

Names like ‘Powder Mountain’ and ‘Snowbird’ (pictured above and below) for some of the state’s more famous resorts give you some idea of what to expect, but those with less obvious names like ‘Solitude,’ ‘Subndance’ or even ‘Brighton’ are great too.

La Niña May Make Winter 16/17 Drier, Or Perhaps Snowier?

Weather forecasters in North America are already starting to make their predictions for conditions next winter and are looking at a ‘developing La Niña’ in the Pacific Ocean as a key to global weather forecasts.

La Niña and El Nino are the long established names of the two prevalent ocean temperature extremes in the Pacific Ocean which, to a large extent, tend to strongly influence weather conditions in countries surrounding the Pacific.

Exactly how much that influence extends Westwards beyond states like California and Colorado is open to debate, although it does seem that a lot of the weather than happens in the West does eventually affect us.  In any case British tabloids tend to report each autumn that Britain is in for a catastrophic new Ice age type winter on the basis of that Pacific climate pattern.

In fact they seem to tend to report that Britain is in for a catastrophic new Ice age type winter regardless of whether the Pacific is likely to have a ‘strong El Nino’ or ‘strong La Niña’ and don’t seem to be put off their enthusiastic predictions by the fact that Britain has endured six fairly mild winters since 2010.

Last winter’s ‘very strong El Nino’ (one of the three strongest recorded in the past 60 years) broke a four winter drought in California but also brought milder conditions to Central and Eastern North America where ski areas suffered one of their worst winters for decades.

El Nino has been on the wane since last spring however and La Niña has been making her way back to dominance. The debate currently is just how strong this winter’s La Niña will be, with forecasters noting that a strong El Nino has only once before been directly followed the next winter by a strong La Niña in the 60 years that recordings have been kept.

Like El Nino, La Niña seems to have mixed blessing. In Colorado it is reported that mild to moderate La Nina winters over the past decade or so have meant less snow and warmer temperatures so she’s not welcome there.

Other areas further north and East seem keener to have her as very cold areas being a bit milder (but still plenty cold enough for snow) tend to get more snow from La Niña conditions.  The jet stream tends to track further north again benefitting more northerly ski regions.

But as with all weather systems, chaos theory is the dominant factor to keep in mind.  Colorado resorts including Copper Mountain and Arapahoe Basin broke their annual snowfall records during a La Niña winter in 2011.

Enregistrer