The best off-piste skiing today

Each resort is refreshed once every three hours. The catalogue runs in staggered slices, so resorts do not all share one timestamp. This board reads the latest published snapshot.

The same snow model as the piste score, applied to natural snow on every height band and aspect, in the open and in the trees. We judge the surface hour by hour, from powder and wind buff to wind board, crust, corn and slush, and how quickly lift-served powder gets tracked out. The score then looks at the best quarter of the terrain, because an experienced skier chooses where to go, and blends the whole day with the best three hours.

Avalanche danger never changes the off-piste score. The avalanche badge shows the regional danger level from the official bulletin, for information only. A high score means good snow, not a safe slope: read the full bulletin for your area, and make your own terrain decisions or go with a guide.

When the resort is closed there are no lifts to reach the off-piste, so we show No lift access instead of a number. The touring score still judges the natural snow.

Off-piste looks only at natural snow: new snow, wind, sun on each aspect and how tracked out it is. The piste score is about groomed and machine-made snow on open runs. After rain and a hard freeze the off-piste can be a frozen crust while the groomers still ski well. Bad weather while you ski lowers both scores in the same way, although trees soften flat light off-piste. Different questions, different answers.

Every score has a likely range and a confidence word. "Likely 62 to 78" means the score should land in that range about eight times in ten. "Checked against reports" means today's evidence backs it up: a snow station close by read in the last day, or matching check-ins from two or more regular reporters. "Partly checked" means some evidence: resort lift status, run reports from the last three days, a snow station within 30 km or a satellite image from the last five days. "Estimated from weather models" means weather models and seasonal patterns only. Long gaps in the weather data lower the confidence. On the boards, no marker beside a score means Checked against reports, Partly checked is shown as it is, and Estimated means estimated from weather models. The score's tooltip gives the full words and the range, and each resort's forecast shows the range under every day's score. Confidence never changes the score itself: it tells you how far to trust it.

Hero is 90 and above, Firing 75 to 89, Great 65 to 74, Good 50 to 64, Fair 35 to 49, Poor 20 to 34 and Flat below 20. No lift access replaces the number when the resort is closed. Score unavailable appears when there is not enough data to score fairly.

It compares today's conditions with the historical average for that resort at this time of year. A positive luck score means conditions are better than usual; negative means worse than typical. It is not shown while the resort is closed.

Weather comes from Open-Meteo, which combines national weather models. Runs and lifts come from OpenStreetMap via OpenSkiMap. Official run and lift reports are used where resorts publish them. Snow depth comes from public station networks such as SLF in Switzerland, GeoSphere Austria, Météo-France and SNOTEL in the United States, satellite snow cover from Copernicus Sentinel-2 and NASA images, and check-ins from skiers using PeakWave. Avalanche danger badges come from the regional warning services, via avalanche.report in Europe and avalanche.org in North America. The full list, with licences, is under How the score works.

A resort earns a powder alert when at least 30 cm of snow has fallen on the upper slopes in the last 48 hours and ridge-top wind during today's lift hours is below 40 km/h. It points to a likely powder day. It is about the snow only: avalanche danger never changes the alert or any score, so always check the local avalanche bulletin.