Visperterminen, CH: 02/01/22

[Face4Me]

Outside of the local's areas, lift infrastructure at the medium, large, and monster places here is usually so far ahead of the U.S.; it's laughable. @Face4Me probably has some observations after his recent visit.

There were some t-bars and platter lifts at Val Thorens & Courcheval. I didn't see any at Meribel, but that doesn't mean there weren't any!

As James said, the lift infrastructure was insane ... particularly at Val Thorens. Many of the six-packs had two loading areas ... that is, as you approached the lift, you either went to the right or the left, and two chairs were being loaded at essentially the same time. The loading area for every gondola we rode was in an enclosed building. The cabins came around and you loaded from a deck. In most cases, the cabins were one right behind the other, so there was no delay in loading ... it was continuous.

I've definitely never seen anything like it anywhere else.

The lift infrastructure at Courcheval seemed to be a little closer to what we typically see in the U.S.

 

[ciscokid]

Fantastic James
Correlating Hickory and Bobcat to Europe, I love it.

Lots of areas in Russia to explore!

Number of ski areas in Europe by country 2021 | Statista

In the 2020/21 winter season, Germany had the most ski areas in Europe at 498, while the number of ski areas in Italy totaled 349.

www.statista.com

 

[jamesdeluxe]

Thanks for following my reports, CK. I landed yesterday afternoon and am happy to report that I had zero travel or COVID-related inconveniences (especially after hearing about @Face4Me's flight problems in both directions). As mentioned, the pandemic bureaucracy added a not inconsiderable pain-in-the-arse factor and I hope that next season it won't be as prominent -- unfortunately that's what I said a year ago, so who knows.

Correlating Hickory and Bobcat to Europe, I love it.

Yeah, it's fascinating how you have these two poles over there:

1. Hundreds upon hundreds of local ski areas that are straight out of the NELSAP playbook, but usually with much larger acreage and vertical drop. For the record, many are threatened with closure for the same reason as in the U.S. -- generating sufficient revenue to cover operating costs.
2. Huge interconnected resorts with truly cutting-edge (read "very expensive") lift technology and other on-mountain infrastructure that we rarely see here in the States.

On this trip, I only had one ski day at the second group -- usually, it's about half and half. While it's incredible to travel on skis across huge distances, have thousands of skiable acreage at your disposal, enjoy dozens of restaurants and chalets, and take advantage of modern high-speed lifts, I'm not a fan of sharing the experience with thousands of other people at the same time (i.e. industrial tourism). It's a first-world problem, I know, and most people don't seem to be bothered by it as much as me; however, I always factor it into my planning.