Feeling anxious

Thank you pole plant and Ranchero, hope the skiing is good for you two too!

Just having second breakfast after a few hrs skiing this morning at Grands Montets. Conditions on piste were very nice first thing. As expected it got pretty busy by 10am as all surrounding resorts are using area for their ski lessons. If your renting go for a nice pair of piste skis.

The reports say temperatures will drop greatly after xmas. That should allow the cannons to do their stuff.

We are on our way to Les Carroz and Flaine on Saturday so I will post daily updates for that area. :shock:

Surely proper snow is required in addition to artificial? Or can you ski in nothing but artificial if it is cold enough to make?

At this time of year lots of pistes are made entirely from artificial snow. The goal is to put down a base layer about 40 cm thick in late November early December followed by another 20 cm in early January. Although it can be made at temperatures just below zero it's not very efficient, at –3 °C a snow canon will produce 9 m³/h requiring 5 kWh/m³, at –10 °C it will produce 60 m³/h requiring 1 kWh/m³.

Each season in Tyrol alone they make 40 million cubic meters, which is enough to cover 5400 hectares of piste. Somebody worked out that this would also cover a 2000 km long (roughly the distance from Innsbruck to Madrid) 4 lane motorway to the depth of 1 metre.

To make all of this requires 90 GWh of electricity and 16 million cubic metres of water at a cost of 120 to 160 million euros.

Is that a c&p from a Google search?

To be precise it is at or below -2.6C that it is the most efficient temperature for snow making ;)

And it has a special chemical added to the water that is bio degradable :)

We're in Les Gets for Xmas and there is absolutely no snow! They've opened one blue run and the general feeling is that's possibly for insurance. You can ski in Avoriaz if you want to queue for hours at Ardent or Prodain and that's if you're able to buy a daily pass as they're not available unless you're in Morzine and even then you have to queue for the next day with no guarantee that you'll get a pass. There's a flurry due on Xmas day and maybe 9cm on Sunday but that still will not be enough for Les Gets to 'open'.