#alps-travel

#alps-travel

Kirkwood has had a pretty solid past few days, seeing 42 inches of snow through the past 7 days, 31 of which fell in the past 48 hours. As of April 13th, Kirkwood has 5 lifts spinning with 45 of 84 trails open to skiers and snowboarders.

Both days delivered clear skies and cold temperatures, with hardly a cloud overhead and almost no wind. Despite the strong alpine sun, temperatures remained below freezing, keeping the snow in excellent shape across the mountain.

The Black Lantern Inn was a familiar place where I ate with my kids, sometimes once a week. My room was well beyond my expectations for a last-minute booking: a king-sized bed, separate living area, jacuzzi bath, and many thoughtful details, including several back issues of Skiing History Magazine to flip through.

The ski season in Colorado is being described as the worst in 50 years, with resorts opening less than half their usual terrain for much of the winter.

In 2027, Christmas Day and Boxing Day fall on a weekend, providing two substitute bank holidays on December 27 and 28, leading to an extended holiday opportunity.

Mammoth Mountain reported between 12 and 18 inches of new snow over the past 48 hours, with additional snowfall forecasted to add to an already solid late-season base.

In 2025, the mountain rescue service faced an unprecedented number of operations, with 13,037 rescues conducted, averaging 35 missions a day, reflecting a significant increase in demand.

Les Deux Alpes keeps unfolding lap after lap, zone after zone, until you realize you've spent the entire day chasing terrain that never really ends.

Standing among the Alps, it's easy to believe that they will last forever. They seem too big to fail, too old to change. This illusion of permanence has long entranced travelers who have visited to experience the intoxicating feeling of being daunted and dwarfed by a landscape's authority. But even mountains move: This past May an avalanche of ice and rock tore through the Lötschental Valley, erasing the village of Blatten in less than a minute.

"At the top of that lift, I met my travel companion ( Travel + Leisure's own Nina Ruggiero), where we dined at Schafalm, a ski hut so charming, you'd think it was a movie set thanks to its crackling fireplace in the center, cedar walls, and lederhosen-wearing staff. "Are you guys going to the concert tonight?" three more strangers-turned-friends asked as BSB blared over the speakers, sitting down to join us for our cocoa break."

From Sunday afternoon through early Tuesday, guidance converges on timing but diverges on intensity, so confidence is highest in a light event rather than a strong storm. Snow should be most persistent Sunday evening into Monday night, then taper Tuesday morning. The conservative near-term expectation is light accumulation for many resorts, with localized higher-terrain totals near 7 cm in the western and southern Alps.