Before the snow

Late October looks like an interval. Several of the hotels we follow are closed, lifts are idle, and the kitchens that stay open say so on their homepages, as though it were news. In a way it is.

I find this the most useful fortnight of the year for reading a place, because the work of the season is visible before the season covers it. St. Moritz reports that about 73 per cent of the snow it stored over the summer survived, enough to plan a first cross-country trail from 7 November. The same municipality has opened a consultation on widening the run from Oberalpina to St. Moritz Bad.

In Pontresina, the Engadiner Post reports that an appeal against the CHF 10mn Roseg sports-ground credit was withdrawn, and Südostschweiz that the cantonal court stopped the municipality from collecting almost CHF 140,000 from an owner converting a multi-family house. In Arosa, the Kulm's own site now gives its reopening as the winter season of 2029.

None of this is a reason to travel this weekend. It is a way of understanding what you are buying into, whether that is a fortnight or a front door. This issue's stays follow the same rule: open now, or with their terms already written down.