How much snow is needed.

I've read the snow reports but i don't know how much snow is enough snow.
50cm it seems like a lot of the white stuff for me. Can you ski in it? I don't have a clue.

Can anyone shed some light please?

Depends. 50cm is enough to ski on depending on what surface it is covering. In a lot of Austria 10cm would be enough on lower slopes as they are generally grassy. In the ROCKies for example the rocks aren't coveredn till there is 150cm of snowcover.

Do you mean 50cm of fresh powder or a 50cm base. As Ross said totally depends on where you are as to whether a 50cm base is good, in Austria its fine, but somewhere like Big White (Canada) cant open until its got at least 70cm and parts of the mountain were only skiable when there was more than 150cm, as Ross also said.

As for 50cm of fresh powder, its the stuff we dream of :lol: (well i do anyway haha). Yes you can ski that much fresh, but its not easy really, but once you can you will never want to ski on piste again :D

davidmpires wrote:I've read the snow reports but i don't know how much snow is enough snow.
50cm it seems like a lot of the white stuff for me. Can you ski in it? I don't have a clue.

Can anyone shed some light please?

In the mid west we are happy with a 4-5 foot base. But then again it's the midwest and the season doesn't start till January and it ends in March.

and in piste how much snow is needed? Bennyboy I don't really understand that base thing. Can you explain?

Resorts that are above the treeline and have rocky ground undeneath, the snow needs more depth, or the rocks stick through. For pistes at altitude, bashed flat to form a compacted base, I would say a min of 30cm is needed. For alpine meadows, half that will suffice as it's smoother terrain.

david** I was referring purely to piste in my first response.

As with everything it depends.....

When snow reports talk about 50cm of fresh snow this is then compacted on piste to a fraction. Pre-season you're looking for a big fall to form a good base, then more on top of that.

On piste if it looks all white and you can't see the ground starting to come through then generally it's fine to ski on. Skiing on meadows is ideal as if you've 4 or 5cm of compacted snow, even less in parts, you're safe (or the skis are more to the point).

With stone or rocky terrain you can get the stones rising as the piste gets churned up. However it's not so much these that are the problem as they're loose, it's what's lying underneath and fixed in the ground as you go over it. Sometimes you can actually see a polymer strand off the base peel itself back!

Some resorts or web sites publish snow depth (at highest lift and at village level say) which gives an idea - but of course it's measured at certain points, and it might be a bit optimistic!

Howver when you see reports of 30-50cm of fresh snow, and you know it's falling on an existing base however small, that's a good sign! Time to start packing.