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The Dangers of Skiing Off Piste In Europe
- Thread starter Jacob
- Start date
Here the highest trees are at 1200meters in the mountains, but near the coast its lower, last 50 years treeline has grown higher, and especially 100.
It seems most of my powskiiing here is below treeline as it just blows of the open areas into the trees, so you can have 0cm of pow on top of mountain, and 1+ meter of fresh fluffy stuff in the trees. Sucks that trees tends to be supertight. Not a huge fan of trees, crashed into them to many times.
high visibility day in the trees here, usually way way way worse
It seems most of my powskiiing here is below treeline as it just blows of the open areas into the trees, so you can have 0cm of pow on top of mountain, and 1+ meter of fresh fluffy stuff in the trees. Sucks that trees tends to be supertight. Not a huge fan of trees, crashed into them to many times.
high visibility day in the trees here, usually way way way worse
A Basin is a fair amount South of most of the resorts in the Alps true?
Keep going North in North America and the timber line keeps dropping down. Could that be part of this puzzle?
Keep going North in North America and the timber line keeps dropping down. Could that be part of this puzzle?
- Joined
- Nov 12, 2015
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2000m ish is a fair stab for the natural limit. I've skied Val Thorens a lot (Resort is measured at 2300m ) and only found a single bush like tree with some scrub in the Lac de Lou exit.
Thinking of Innsbruck. Trees start to get pretty sparse above the top station at about 1950m at Patscherkofel so maybe treeline absolutely at around 2100m.
Wiki seems to agree citing a treeline at 2200m for CH. Could be worse - Scotland is 500m and Northern Quebec 0m apparently.
A-Basin is at 39.6*N.
Quite a bit of scatter at the same latitude.
From https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/global-treeline-position-15897370/
I WAS admiring it. But I'd like to see it plotted/color coded as an overlay on a map of each continent, based on altitude and latitude.
Maybe as a layer on Caltopo.
I also learned from that article that there are really 3 different "tree lines." Which do we usually mean in skiing?
In the Alps the treeline runs at around 2000 m give or take.
And yes, in the Eastern Alps (particularly Austria) the majority of resorts top out at altitudes well below most parking lots of Colorado resorts. Many of them operate between Christmas and Easter only. For example the highest lift access in Austria is around the A-Basin parking lot mark.
And yes, in the Eastern Alps (particularly Austria) the majority of resorts top out at altitudes well below most parking lots of Colorado resorts. Many of them operate between Christmas and Easter only. For example the highest lift access in Austria is around the A-Basin parking lot mark.
Either he got unlucky with the snow conditions or he did it wrong.
The important thing is the elevation of the tree line relative to the base. As others have said, tree line in the Alps is around 2000 m, but there are a lot of resorts that are around 1000-1500 m at base level. So, they’ve got 500-1000 m of terrain below tree line.
It’s only the “high” resorts in the Alps that have bases near 2000 m.
Depends on the resort I'd say. There are quite a few resorts in Switzerland (or the Alps in general) which I would avoid at all cost.
For reference the highest alpine resort (Val Thorens in France) is at about 7.500 ft and lifts run up to 11.000 ft. That's the same what Snowbird/LCC offers with the difference that the French resort is entirely treeless. Gotta watch out when the fog is rolling in.
Virtually all Colorado resorts are significantly higher than that. Thinking that A-Basin starts where the Trois Vallees top out and the treeline goes even 2000 ft. higher is unreal.
There are many ways of doing a trip to the Alps wrong. Choosing the wrong resort is one of them.
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- Dec 2, 2015
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There’s a treeline. Lenzerheide, Switzerland.
(Shot taken off the tv during WCup finals)
What are some?
Lenzerheide has a lot of fun lift-served off-piste terrain. There isn’t a lot of super challenging stuff, but there isn’t much that’s boring either. There also aren’t many hazards for a resort in the Alps, so it’s a relatively safe place to ski.
It’s one of my favourites, but I usually stay in Arosa and ski over.