New Year-How Crowded?

We have always skied off peak, usually last week Jan, first week of Mar.
This year we are contemplating the week including new year. Is it very
crowded all week? Any suggestions for where might be relatively quiet in
Europe, assuming there is reasonable snow everywhere.

Cheers,
Rod Jenkins
UK

"Ace" <b.rogers@virgin.net> wrote in message
news:sth9qv8kbpmmj53812dm7422cjo4lqaar6@...
> On Sun, 2 Nov 2003 07:01:37 +0100, "PG" <pgk9@alpesprovence.net>
> wrote:
>
> >> New year is much more crowded than feb, because it is the same week for
> >> all regions of France... and the rest of the world !
> >
> >Not my experience. In France *everybody* goes skiing at some point during
> >Feb, and the rest of the world seems to join them. Not the case early
Jan.
>
> But New Year's week itself is consistently the busiest of all in most
> French resorts. It seems that the whole of France goes to the mountain
> for New Year.

Of course it's incredibly busy, but it's not the 'traditional' ski holiday
time for the French. Most once a year holiday skiers tend to go during Feb,
and stay longer. Conditions are more likely to be good, especially for the
smaller resorts. I'd be interested to see the monthly stats for visitors
though. Approx. some 350,000 Brits go skiing in France alone each year,
joining around 4 million French on the slopes, as well as 200,000 Dutch,
300,000 Spanish/Portuguese, 250,000 Belgians, 300,000 Italians (always seems
more), 80,000 Central Europeans (mostly Czech), and just 12,000 from the US
and Canada . Most Germans head for Austria, then Switzerland, and Italy,
before France. So the Brits are still at the top of the league table of
skiing visitors to France (2001 figures).

None of which has much to do with the original subject, but in reply to
Ace's point, it's true that I've taken most of my New Year breaks in the
smaller resorts of the southern French Alps where the New Year has been
relatively *quiet*.

Pete

"Rod Jenkins" <rod.sally@lineone.net> wrote in message
news:3fa3ff39_2@mk-nntp-1.news.uk.worldonline.com...
> We have always skied off peak, usually last week Jan, first week of Mar.
> This year we are contemplating the week including new year. Is it very
> crowded all week? Any suggestions for where might be relatively quiet in
> Europe, assuming there is reasonable snow everywhere.
>
La Thuile in the Aosta valley. Just wrap up warm.

- Neil

"PG" <pgk9@alpesprovence.net> wrote in message news:<bo35jf$16h5vu$1@ID-146837.news.uni-berlin.de>...
>
> Of course it's incredibly busy

Well, maybe not that busy. Although I normally try to avoid New Year
week I went for a week 2 years ago at la Plagne and there were far
fewer queues than in February despite less snow and fewer lifts being
open. We had no problems getting an appartment for that period... it
was actually harder to find a hotel in Val d'Isere the year after for
the first week of January, which is traditionally very busy as the
Forces and Unis are doing competitions there.

Of course, I've seen the same figures as you and know that wrt visitor
numbers by far the busiest time is the two weeks of the Paris winter
school holidays. To be avoided at all costs. I'm normally ski
touring then :-). That's 14th Feb to the 1st of March 2004 for those
interested.

With the RTT people are tending to spread their holidays more.

Bruce makes a good point that all the schools are off over the
Christmas/NY period and I can only suppose that people are spending
time with families (most workers will only take 1 week, if that, and
of course we don't get the 26th as a public holiday). Christmas is
more a winter sun holiday time for the French - Club Med. in Marroco
or somewhere like that. The slopes are generally viewed, with good
reason, as having poor snow and being cold and grey.