The Best Snow Sure Ski Resorts

How to Pick the Perfect Ski Destination with Guaranteed Snow

With climate change always in the news these days and worrying reports of snowless ski slopes, it’s natural to be nervous about what the snow cover is going to be like in the resort you choose for your ski holiday. The good news is that the vast majority of well-known areas have plenty of high-altitude terrain, hence their success and why it’s unlikely you’ll ever be completely snowless. But there are things you can do, places you can choose, to increase your chances of good snow and lots of terrain open to enjoy it.

Before we begin, though, one important thing to remember is that the mainstream media do tend to enjoy a good “misery for skiers” story. When, last December and early January, they focussed on low-lying ski resorts with little able to open, they failed to mention that up above 1,800m the snow depth was actually above average and everything was open. So, in other words, not a big problem at most of the major resorts that we all book our holidays to. But “skiers skiing as usual” would be a rather dull news story.

© Andy Parant

That being said, of course, choosing a high ski area increases your chance of more snow, of higher quality and more terrain being open.

It’s not always essential that the ski resort you stay in is itself at a very high altitude, so long as there’s a fast lift accessing high-altitude slopes. In Les 3 Vallées, the world’s largest ski area, for example, you can stay at one of Courchevel’s lowest areas or even down in the valley below in Brides Les Bains, and still be able to access most of the terrain most of the season, because 85% of the ski area lies above 1,800m.

You only need to think Val Thorens, up at 2,300m and with 90% of its runs above 2,000m altitude, if you want season-long ski-in/ski-out near certainty AND the same access to that same 85% of the full Les 3 Vallées region you can reach from the lower valley villages too. It’s a similar story from the traditional villages in the valley below La Plagne and Les Arcs in Paradiski and many other large European ski areas. It’s a key reason why they’re successful and why hundreds of smaller, lower resorts without access to high runs that we’ve never heard of until there’s a media story of their demise, are losing the battle to climate change.

Across the Atlantic, the US is home to some of the highest-altitude ski areas in the world, their slopes more than two miles above the ground. That allows resorts like Arapahoe Basin to open as early as October and remain so through to June most years, sometimes later into the summer.

Of course, if you aim for northerly latitude, skiing in Scandinavia or Canada, altitude is less of a factor. In fact a lot of Scandinavian ski areas sit close to sea level, and their upper slopes aren’t much above 1,000m in altitude. But with colder air further north, often in the teens below freezing or even the -20s or -30s Celsius up in Lapland, that doesn’t really matter. Nor does the fact that big snowfall accumulation is less likely because the region gets abundant fine powder snow and that constant deep freeze tends to keep the snow crystals in good shape for longer. So while there are never any guarantees and the ski areas are not as extensive, Scandinavia is usually a good bet for snow.

Main Image © Andy Parant

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