23 Feb Chilly days make perfect pistes
St Anton 10th Feb 2012
As St Anton, along with all the other ski resorts braces itself for the onslaught of children and the “half term” week, most skiers are bracing themselves against the cold! It is freezing, literally, freezing. -17 to -24 seems to have been the average temperature split at around 2000m for the last 10 days or so! I’ve never skied in cold like it, not in my 11 years in St Anton.
However, with this cold cold weather we get some excellent snow! Conditions both on and off the pistes are fantastic. The pistes are hard, frozen and fast, well prepared every night and great for piste bashing and clocking up the miles……if the brain freeze doesn’t stop you in your tracks!
Off piste the snow is staying pretty fresh and every time there is a dusting of snow, it stays fresh for much longer….so piste skiers and off piste groups are loving the snow right now!
I was lucky enough to go heli skiing the other week…..I say lucky….it was -28 plus a bit windy so we reckon it was up in the -35’s at the top of the heli drop (maybe colder!) One of our guests managed to get the early onset of frostbite on her nose, luckily spotted by the guide….so even though we had perfect knee deep powder on a firm set base, a quiet, deserted pitch and fresh tracks from top to bottom, it was sadly quite hard to enjoy it as it was so cold!! But enjoy it we did and the experience, if you’ve never done it before, is a great one….!
The resort has been quite busy, building up to the busiest two weeks of the season. The UK Schools half term week, followed by the Austrian Carnival week or “Fasching” as it’s known over here. Unlike this time last year, where we had hardly any snow and warm warm weather, we have plentiful amounts of snow and conditions to keep the snow set for the rest of the season!
So if you’re sat back in the UK whinging that the 2 cm’s of snow and frozen roads has brought the whole country to a stand still, spare a thought for us in the Alps, skiing in – 28 degrees C……but loving every minute of it!
Never to late to book a ski holiday, come and enjoy the best conditions most locals here can remember for a long long time!
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