This time last year (and the year before and the year before…) the Alps were in a pretty sorry state. The high-altitude resorts were just about hanging on to their early season snow despite zillions of skis fighting over these narrow tracks. Lower down things were pretty dire and the valleys were brown and green. In Austria, it all changed between Christmas and New Year but that still meant a poor start to the festive season.
Winter 2017/18 has got off to flyer and keeps delivering snow systems to even the lowest lying resorts. Each week there seems to be shots of big powder days and we were on the Stubai Glacier earlier this week and the off-piste was fantastic (see image above of the conditions from early December).
Group ski events rarely take in the Christmas / New Year period but it provides less reason to fret over dodgy webcams when mid-December is delivering powder day after powder day. The great news continues – snow in Innsbruck yesterday and today, as well as more forecast for early next week.