On Tue, 18 Mar 2008 04:53:26 -0700 (PDT), in
,
Matt T wrote:

Well, heck - I was taking the forecast with a pinch of salt, but the
last 60 hours have brought maybe another 50cm, possibly more.

I'd guess at an average level of 50cm new snow in Engelberg over the
last three days too. That's on top of the new stuff that had fallen
earlier last week, so in sheltered areas there really is a metre or
more of fresh snow. At times on Sunday it was difficult to breathe
through the snow.

Oddly the official reports often show much less new snow than I've
personally seen, but they seem to be taken at village level, 1000m,
which is pretty irrelevant to what's fallen between 1800m and 3000m,
where most of the skiing is. When I left the hill yesterday afternoon
around three it was snowing heavily as low as 1200m, with heavy rain
at the village level and all the way back to Basel later on.

It was
still a bit cloudy at 9am which seemed to keep some people in doors,
so we had an hour of deserted pistes and powder everywhere. Then the
sun came out and so did the crowds, but it still doesn't feel very
busy - not much in the way of lift queues.

Best skiing of my (long) weekend was probably on Sunday, when poor
visibility kept the day trippers away, but we got lucky and skiied in
the clear bits, with the poorer visibility mostly when we were having
lunch.

Started the day with a run down the Laub, which had been good, then
even better, the two times we'd done it the day before. Even our high
expectations were exceeded, with deep soft powder for much of its
1200m drop, and only a half-dozen sets of tracks (despite our 0930
start) spread out across the mountain. Tree-skiing (well between the
bushes really) towards the bottom made the most of the snow down
there, again cutting fresh tracks in new snow, with very little in the
way of sun- or wind-affected crustiness. Later we did more in the
Jochpass area and down to Engstlialp, which was equally nice.

Best conditions of the season here so far I'd say, and all the
forecasters seem to be agreeing for once that Thu/Fri/Sat will bring
another 50 to 70 cms coinciding with a big drop in temperature
(freezing at sea-level). Whoop!

More forecast for Engelberg too, which is good as we've got a group of
friends coming over for the whole of next week. Freezing levels of
~700m should keep all the new stuff in great nick, we hope.