After a mostly not so good time in France, we had more luck in Switzerland. The day we arrived was right after a snowstorm, and had good powder and few crowds on the first day (thursday).

yeah, nice to have a sea of green lights for open lifts, all the way to the top

last cable car to the very top

great view

I sent Arturo first to see how far down he'd slide uncontrollably, but the snow was great, so he didn't :)

we rode the cable car to Mt Fort a few times too

top of the world, kinda :)

The next day, we went to Chamonix, so we were back the following day, a Saturday, which was mildly busy:

we found a sidecountry exit

inviting path down

whee!

the road down went by swiss chalets

riding down to the road where a bus would pick us up

barely made it to the hourly bus with 30 seconds to spare

we got dropped off another entrance to the resort

found more powder to be had :)

getting back to Verbier was more time consuming, long-ish lines

more lines

I then took an interesting off resort road carved in the mountain, col des mines

The next day still, there was still more powder to be had. We went back to the other side of the resort and did another nice side country run:

back on the traverse path, waiting for snowboarders without poles :)

it was fun to ride across the switchbacks between Swiss Chalets, James Bond style

and back to the road, waiting for the bus

ride back up ot the resort

Here's a summary video of the sidecountry run:

one of the bases has view of the local small airport

I then took Arturo to the other side country exit to another base of the resort

you end up on a road

The last day (I skipped one sunny day with less powder), it was very windy, so we went to another side of the resort that was more basic, but also more sheltered from the wind:

our side of the resort was the only bit that had lifts open higher up despite the wind

And that was it for Verbier. We had a great time there and much better snow than in France.