As a birthday treat and due the fact that last season was the first I missed since ’94 I’m considering a trip around Nov/early December mainly on the skis this time.

The hotel owner in Kaprun said her favourite time is in November with the new snowfalls and empty slopes! My only concern is that the glacier there is not exactly challenging and my budget won’t stretch to heli-skiing in Alaska 🙁

Any area suggestions and recommendations for companies specializing in this type of trip would be appreciated.

Cheers

Empty snow covered slopes are pretty useless if the lifts aren’t running.

Avoid Val Thorens unless you like hoardes of privileged toff university kids all behaving like utter cocks!

Ive been to VT twice, once early season (December) and another time mid season (February). Found it to be fairly quiet both times, especially in December. The snow quality was exceptional and most of the time I had entire lifts to myself, especially away from the main resort area.

However this was a few years ago now. I seem to remember my Uni running a trip to VT for some student snow holiday bollocks. Not sure if they are going back again this year. Ive got a feeling they’ll be turning a different resort into a puke filled hell hole.

Cheers

Val Thorens and Tignes were 2 that sprung to mind so sound like a good option as I know them both well.

I’ll check with my daughter re uni trips as she mentioned going again before xmas and I don’t think either of us would appreciate being in the same area apres ski 😯

It depends on the weather completely but I’ve been boarding in Verbier in mid-November the last two years. By the first week of December the whole resort was open. This would apply to Saas-Fee and Zermatt too.
In fact this year almost every resort in the Swiss Valais (and the Portes du Soleil) opened weeks earlier than normal..
It would be a bit risky to book that too far in advance though..three years ago it was crap.. 🙂

Engleberg?

VT is worth a shout. We had great snow there this year, and the highest point is over 3400m so its snow sure (you can ski there in the summer). VT isn’t full of toffs. Either that or I am a toff and don’t realise it.

Verbier IS full of toffs. And Russians. 🙂

I’d second Engelberg, opens before most other resorts in Switzerland and a pretty easy train journey from Zurich airport.

Stu.

Cheers. I’ll check out Engelburg as I’ve never heard of it.