It's still early-days but this months snowfall in the Alps appears to have laid the base for a great start to the season, with high resorts like Val Thorens saying they already have enough snow to see them through the whole season ahead.
The past week has seen more big accumulations of typically 50-100cm (20-40″) on high slopes, 10-20cm (4-8″) at resort level, the latest is a month which began with big snowfalls too.
It's all very different to the start of last season when ski areas struggled for cover below 1,800m altitude. It also comes after a warmest and dry first half of autumn/fall.
Tignes is pictured above after fresh snow yesterday, Avoriaz below after a snowfall on November 6th.
Whilst trying not to get too excited too soon, resorts have been posting images of all the snow with statements such as, "it's like a dream" and felt they need to certify that the pictures posted really are from November 2023, not library pics.
Lech in the Arlberg region which opens for the season this weekend, is one of those repeatedly stressing that the pictures its posting are current. The picture below taken on 17 November.
About 50 ski areas have opened for the season already in Austria, France, Italy and Switzerland with approximately 100 more planning to do so this weekend. They include several more opening early due to all the snowfall including Avoriaz in France and Val Gardena in Italy (pictured below).
The amount of terrain already open at some of the centres that are open is also exceptional for November, with up to 150km (93 miles) of slopes at Ishgl/Samnaun, Solden and Val Thorens. Tignes is reported to already have 1,300m of vertical skiable.
All the snowfall is causing some concerns for skiers and riders heading off piste however with the current danger scale at level 3 (or "considerable") off piste across much of the Alps on the scale to 5 and some regions including the Jungfrau in Switzerland reported to have been at level 4 ("high") in the last week. The experts at Henry's Avalanche Talk (HAT) have just published their first off-piste snow report on the season with lots of advice and tips. They don't usually start publishing these until December.
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