Peter wrote:
The Q is whether anyone from EuroGA would be interested in meeting up anywhere?
I have a window of potentially free days from December 18th through December 22nd which I might use for the second attempt of “fly-to-ski” after last season’s weather-related failure, if the conditions are right.
If anyone else from euroga happens to be flying to or near a ski resort, I’d be happy to meet up.
This may work; also it looks like my TKS (and thus the engine swap) will be delayed till late Jan, so I may do some trips in Jan.
Last (early) winter was a disaster, unless you were good enough to ski high up 
If it’s just me alone, I have a preference for Zell (it’s uniquely convenient how close the lifts are to the airfield) – but I’m happy to go somewhere else, too. Remember, I’m a beginner snowboarder, so I appreciate easy runs, too (I’m happy to ski in more advanced areas).
Peter wrote:
Last (early) winter was a disaster, unless you were good enough to ski high up
At les 2 alpes, the easier slopes are on the top part of the resort (which is high), so that would be easy enough. Fly into Either one of the grenoble airports, or lyon bron, annecy or chambery. From les 2 alpes, you can get a cheap heli ride into alpe d’huez and do some mountain flying.
Not a lot of snow below some 10000ft: http://www.les2alpes.com/en/webcams.html
Peter wrote:
Not a lot of snow below some 10000ft: http://www.les2alpes.com/en/webcams.html
At this time of the year its reasonably common there isn’t a ton of snow.
2 years ago in Alpe d’Huez (LFHU) I went on 26th of december, and it was all brown. Arrived at ~2pm and passed by the airfield, we did some wheeled circuits. Next day big snow storm, and all subsequent days excellent skiing. Landings were on skis (but not all excellent!)
Most of the high slopes at les 2 alpes are the easy ones: >= 2600 m you’ll find plenty of Blues.
https://www.2alpesnet.com/item_files/2alpesnet_map.jpg
FYI, I might have had my best skiing day ever yesterday. Not a ton of slopes open (no greens, only blue onwards), but they were groomed (with good snow), and there is absolutely no one (to the point it worried that if I fell and injured myself I might have to wait a long time for someone to call help).
I also overflew les 2 alpes (where the easy slopes are at the top) and It looked great.
Where did you go?
I am watching the webcams for Grand Bornand and Valgardena and there is no snow, apart from patches of artificial stuff. But maybe if you are a good skier and go high up, it’s different.
I might pop down to Bolzano anyway, to check the place out
I was in Alpe D’Huez (my grandmother has an appartment there so it’s convenient)
Combined great flying (they have an altiport, and we flew to a lot of other places (like Courchevel, Meribel, dirt strips)) with great skiing.
At the moment, the problem is the majority of open slopes are red & black (but difficulty is much easier because snow is better than normally (not having tons of people skiing helps). I think there was next to zero greens (and greens there are uninteresting anyway), a couple blue (some mid length).
There’s a black which is about 16km long and 1800m down. It’s black because it’s long and requires endurance (and is too crowded normally, making a lot of “meat obstacles” and destroying the snow). I usually take my non skier friends there almost as soon as they can parallel ski (but then it takes well over 1h to complete instead of ~15 min (when legs are in shape, snow is good, and no one around. Ears can pop!).
Looking at the times it does seem a bit unrealistic speed average but maybe the length is a little less (time was consistent across 3 runs yesterday) – I looked at the length online.
How about LFLG Grenoble for accessing those places (when you don’t want or can’t fly into altiports)?
