Europe may be in the grip of an Arctic freeze, but the traditional ski season only has a few months left. For those who haven’t booked already, Helen Raine looks at the best places to go for late snow.
Going skiing late in the season has some major benefits. There’s the cheap and plentiful accommodation, the hot sun on your back as you zip down the slopes and those longer days which make for more time on the piste. There’s just one snag; a risk that one essential ingredient will be missing, namely the snow.
Choose your resort carefully though and you’ll find the white stuff even after Easter and beyond.
Altitude matters; high resorts tend to have more reliable snow so aim to be over 2,000 metres minimum and ideally over 3,000 metres for some runs.
Latitude is also key, as northerly resorts often stay open longer with good conditions. Glaciers are a good bet, providing excellent year-round conditions in some areas. And if you pick a resort with extensive snow machines, manmade snow can do the job if the heavens fail you.
Once you’ve found somewhere that fits the criteria, check that the key ski lifts to higher slopes will be open and perhaps just as crucially, the bars.
You won’t necessarily find a thumping nightlife at the end of the season, but you will want somewhere to enjoy a hot chocolate or hot toddy at the end of a long day’s skiing.
Here are some of the best bets for late snow this year.
Glacier skiing
Tignes, France
Tignes has the Grand Motte glacier and thus guaranteed snow even when all the other resorts are faced with mournfully green slopes. You can ski right into July and August.
An underground railway will transport you from Tignes Val Claret to pretty much the top of the Tignes glacier ski area in six delightfully warm minutes.
Tignes comprises of Tignes le Lac, Val Claret and three other villages so it’s a large resort with good connections which caters to all abilities. It can get a trifle chilly though.
Fly to Geneva, Chambery, Grenoble or Turin. Visit www.tignes.net/en.
Hintertux, Austria
Hintertux also guarantees skiing on a glacier right into the summer.
At its peak, Hinterhux has 157km of pistes which interconnect with Mayrhofen, and in the Zillertal area there are 662km of pistes. This means that you should find snow even below the glacier as well as a huge range of different slopes and experiences.
Fly to Innsbruck. Visit www.tux.at.
Whistler-Blackcomb, Canada
This resort, located near Vancouver, has summer skiing on the glacier and offers a half-pipe for snowboarders (a u-shaped bowl that allows the more kamikaze of the snowboarding community to defy gravity by leaping, spinning and turning from wall to wall).
There’s also a fabulous peak-to-peak gondola between Whistler and Blackcomb which radically increases your choice of slopes in poor weather conditions.
Fly to Vancouver. Visit www.whistlerblackcomb.com.
Midnight sun
Riksgränsen, Sweden
You can’t get much more northerly than Riksgränsen. It’s 30 kilometres inside the Arctic Circle, so you can ski under the midnight sun in the summer as sunset merges slowly into sunrise.
There are a good number of pistes, six lifts and some great off piste routes which might well take you over the Norwegian border and back again. You can even ski down to a railway and catch the train back to the resort. Heli-skiing here is also (comparatively) reasonably priced.
Celebrate your off-piste adventures with a ‘wolf’s paw’ of lingonberry and vodka in the local bar.
Fly to Kiruna via Stockholm.
Synthetic solutions
Brixental, Austria
This is Austria’s largest interconnected ski area. It offers a good certainty of snow, but if the weather does not oblige, then 1,000 snow machines will ensure that around 210km of pistes remain open.
It’s great for everyone from carvers to families with kids (there’s an eatery for every 3.5km of piste so that should keep them happy). Make the most of low season rates and ski here in spring.
Fly to Salzburg, Innsbruck or Munich.
Selva Gardena, Italian Dolomites
Efficient snow-making means that 160km of piste can be snowy regardless of the temperatures here.
The scenery is stunning, and there is an excellent system of pistes and lifts. Private tuition is cheaper than elsewhere in Europe, so it’s a good spot if you want to brush up on the basics.
Fly to: Bergamo, Verona and Innsbruck, then transfer by bus. Visit www.valgardena.it/en.
Reliably snowy
Méribel, France
Meribel has access to the Trois Vallées (Three Valleys) ski area and generally has plenty of snow.
With 600km of pistes available in the valleys, it’s so big that it’s easy to get carried away and miss the last lift (not something that will happen twice as getting back down will take you a long, long time). It’s good for groups of mixed ability as there is such a range of slopes.
The best prices are to be found during that April, before the resort closes.
Fly to Chambery, Grenoble, Geneva or Turin.
Visit www.meribel.net.
Val d’Isère, France
The microclimate and altitude of the spectacular mountains in Val d’Isère means that snow often persists until May and so the resort is lively even later in the season.
The lifts give advanced skiers options to ski off-piste easily here, but there are good slopes for beginners too.
There’s a link to Tignes on the mountain giving access to 300km of slopes.
It’s not the cheapest resort, however, and it’s probably better for more advanced skiers.
Fly to Geneva, Chambery, Grenoble or Turin.
Chandolin, Switzerland
Chandolin is quintessentially Alpine, with snowy peaks and wooden chalets and is very much an undiscovered gem.
It’s high, so there’s good snow until late in the season, but also plenty of sunshine.
This is a good resort for kids, with the baby slopes located in the centre of the village, a good ski school and excellent nursery slopes.
With over 75kms of runs, you are likely to be able to ski all alone on the more remote runs.
Fly to Geneva.
Geilo, Norway
Geilo is great for spring skiing, with plenty of snow but some heat in the sun. It has two piste areas, Vestlia and Slaatta on either side of the town, giving 40 slopes to choose from and a fabulous snowboard park.
Accommodation is plentiful at great prices in spring, although you might well be the only patrons in the bar.
It’s not great for expert skiers since there aren’t any really steep slopes.
For beginners, however, it’s the perfect introduction to skiing and has a whole range of other activities in case you don’t love it as much as you thought you would.
Fly to Oslo. Visit www.geilo.no/en/winter/.