Snow it begins

It is that time of the year, at least in Europe when the ski resorts start to open, a lot of the US resorts like A-Basin already opened several weeks ago, they get a materially longer season, opening as early as October and closing on exceptional years as late as July 4th! I've actually ski'd July 4th weekend in Colorado.

Typically resorts in Europe start to open the beginning of December and the last ones close end of May although the higher resorts are often skiable before and after these dates.

It is often forgotten the wide range of ski resorts in Europe for example the most southerly ski resort is just outside Granada in the Sierra Nevada mountains in the south of Spain where the temperature regularly exceeds 40C in the summer, it climbs to 3300m at the top of the skiable area. In the Winter the temperature in those same Sierra Nevada mountains regularly drops below -10C even before the windchill.

Spain does have other weather extremes Madrid is another example of similar temperature swings, where we live it never gets low enough to result in even an air frost in the Winter. We are a couple of ours from the Sierra Nevadas so in theory we could snow ski in the morning and water ski in the Mediterranean in the afternoon.

Typically the highest ski resort in Europe is listed as Val Thorens which rises to 3230m, so there is a case to say that the Sierra Nevada resort is not only the furthest south but also the highest. In fact on the published list of top 10 highest resorts in Europe the Sierra Nevada resort is not even listed.

This last weekend we got to ski at Grand Montets at the top of the Chamonix valley in France the top of which is 3275m (also higher than Val Thorens), this same last weekend the Sierra Nevadas along with the likes of Val Thorens also opened. Interestingly Grand Montets is also not listed in the highest ski resorts in Europe so the list is somewhat broken.

Whilst I record my ski runs on Strava they don't seem to appear on the widget on this blog for reasons best known to the Strava widget.

Suffice to say only a small part of the resort was open but the second run of the day was an unpisted red with plenty of fluffy bumps, good start to the 2022-23 season. The first season without any form of restrictions or limitations for a few years.