Skiing & Snowsports in April

Bansko is the cheapest credible World Cup-grade skiing in the European Union: the resort hosts annual FIS Alpine World Cup races on its Pirin pistes, runs seventy-five kilometers of marked terrain under 2,914-meter Todorka, and charges lift-pass and lesson prices the Alps abandoned a generation ago. The town below is the other half of the argument, an old stone quarter of mehana taverns where dinner with wine costs less than an Alpine sandwich. The gondola queue at peak weeks is the honest tax; the skiing above it, especially the Tomba run the racers use, is the real thing.

Borovets has been a mountain resort since 1896, which makes it Bulgaria's oldest and one of Europe's earliest, and its skiing runs the Rila north faces to 2,560 meters with the Musala massif looming above. The resort has hosted World Cup races twice in its history, runs some of the region's best night skiing under the pines, and sits fifty minutes from Sofia's airport, which makes it the easiest credible ski weekend in southeastern Europe. The Yastrebets sector's long cruisers are the draw for intermediates; the gondola puts the whole vertical in one ride.

Levi is Finland's biggest and busiest ski resort, and the only one that regularly hosts the alpine World Cup. Every November the men's and women's slalom circus comes to the Levi Black run, opening the technical season under floodlights and polar twilight. For everyone else Levi is a broad, well-groomed fell with dozens of slopes, gentle nursery areas and a long season: the front slopes can open in October and the south side runs into May, all above the Arctic Circle where snow is dependable and the midwinter light is a low blue glow. It is a forgiving place to learn or to rack up easy piste miles, with ski-in ski-out village lodging, a big cross-country trail network and reindeer and husky trips a short drive away. The resort's own ski school covers alpine, snowboard, cross-country and more for every level.

Riksgransen is the most northerly ski resort in Sweden and one of the strangest and best in the world, because here the season barely starts before spring and runs on until midsummer. Sitting right on the Norwegian border 200 kilometers above the Arctic Circle, it opens around February and stays open into late June, and its signature is midnight-sun skiing: in May and June the lifts run into the night and you can ski under a sun that never sets. The terrain is what draws serious skiers, a compact lift-served area backed by big off-piste bowls, couloirs and long ridge lines dropping toward the fjords, with easy access to guided ski touring and heli-skiing across the border peaks. Snow quality this far north stays cold and stable late into spring, and the light, low and golden for hours, is unlike anything in the Alps. The Arctic train from Narvik delivers you almost to the piste, past mountains and fjords, and the historic Meteorologen lodge sits beside the station. For spring skiing with a midnight sun, Riksgransen has no real equal.

The Vallee Blanche is the most famous off-piste run on earth: 15 kilometers and about 2,000 vertical meters of glacier skiing from the 3,842-meter Aiguille du Midi, down through the Geant icefall and the Mer de Glace, terrain that legally sensible people ski only behind a guide because the crevasses are real and unmarked. That requirement is the product: the Compagnie des Guides de Chamonix, the oldest guiding company in the world, founded 1821, runs daily descents at up to six skiers per guide, matching route variants, the classic, Petit Envers, Grand Envers, to ability. A strong resort intermediate with solid off-piste form can ski the line they have seen in every ski film.

Engelberg is the freerider's Switzerland. The Titlis lifts rise over 2,000 vertical meters from the valley, and off their shoulders hang some of the most celebrated lift-accessed descents in the Alps, above all the Laub, an unbroken 1,100-meter powder face that skiers cross continents for, plus the Galtiberg's glacier-to-valley run at over 2,000 vertical meters. The town's big-mountain scene draws Scandinavian and international freeriders all winter, supported by an established guiding culture with IFMGA guides who know the faces' moods daily. Ski touring extends the terrain in every direction once the lifts are left behind. For piste skiers the area is pleasant; for freeriders it is one of the sport's serious addresses.

Alpine skiing as the world knows it was codified here. Hannes Schneider founded the Ski School Arlberg in St. Anton in 1921 and his Arlberg technique became the global standard, which gives the village a claim no other resort can make: this is skiing at the source. The terrain backs the history. The Arlberg is Austria's largest connected ski area and its freeride benchmark, with more than 200 kilometers of off-piste terrain, legendary runs like the Valluga's backside descents, and a guiding scene, from the giant Skischule Arlberg to specialist off-piste outfits, that turns ambitious intermediates into competent powder skiers in a week. The village's après culture is its own institution, for better and worse, and the January Hahnenkamm crowd one valley over completes the Tirolean winter circuit.

In the Lyngen Alps, 1,200 to 1,800 meter peaks drop directly into the fjord, so descents literally end at the tideline. It is widely considered Europe's premier ski-touring arena outside the Alps, and the culture is deliberately helicopter-free: access is by skins, boat, and lodge, with IFMGA-certified guiding at the top operators. The season outlasts the Alps by weeks, running mid-February to the end of May, and April-May is the honest prime, with a stable snowpack, corn cycles, and daylight that never really ends. Ski-and-sail weeks, living aboard and touring a new summit each day, are the format the region made famous.

The Troll Peninsula is where Icelandic heli-skiing was born: IFMGA guide Jokull Bergmann turned his family's Viking-era Klaengsholl farm into the country's first heli operation in 2008, and the peninsula above Dalvik still holds Iceland's biggest lift-free terrain. Descents run up to 1,200 to 1,500 vertical meters and finish at the Arctic Ocean shoreline, and the season's trick is its tail: April and May bring corn snow, stable weather, and near-24-hour daylight, so you can ski to the sea under the midnight sun weeks after the Alps have shut down. Bergmenn Mountain Guides, Iceland's first IFMGA guide service, runs lodge-based touring weeks and the hut-to-hut Troll Traverse for those who prefer to earn their turns.

Zermatt is the summit of the ski world in the literal sense: the highest lift-served skiing in Switzerland at 3,883 meters, glacier runs that operate year-round, and the Matterhorn standing over every descent. For ski tourers it is the destination in the oldest sense, the finishing line of the Haute Route from Chamonix, six or seven days of glacier travel and 3,000-meter cols through the Valais that ends with the Matterhorn filling the horizon, the most famous ski tour on earth and a guided rite of passage for fit ski mountaineers. Around the touring, the resort's 360 kilometers of pistes link over the Theodul pass into Italy's Cervinia, and the village's guiding institutions run everything from first off-piste days to 4000er ski descents.