The Portes du Soleil is an obvious place for them to head: handy for Geneva, part of a huge ski network, with a near perfect resort base boasting two cinemas that show English-language films, skating and hockey ice rinks, decent shops, restaurants and cafes around quaint squares, plus laid-back après ski.
Together they form a vast high altitude ski network to rival those in the European Alps – but arguably with better snow conditions.
Once the mapping is complete, planners can begin to locate possible ski trail networks, or pods, using Geographic Information Systems software applications, which involve the manipulation of electronic maps and other data.
The 3-D map for the resort I am visiting, for example, lacks trail names and details on the ski lift network.
Yet no matter how much technology is involved in planning a ski trail network, the actual construction of the trails remains a low-tech enterprise.
Stick to the ski-trail network on the adjacent hilltop, or try the tricky six mile descent into Winthrop, best done early in the morning to allow time for a fortifying breakfast of omelette and oatmeal at the village's Duck Brand Cantina before branching onto the flatter Methow Community Trail for some wildlife-spotting along the Methow River (everything from wolves to cougars prowl the valley).
That means most of us can mutter away at the power elite and their accompanying staff and journalists, helicoptering into a Swiss ski town to network, party and indulge in long chin-pulling sessions on global improvement.
The Trois-Vallées is home to one of the largest ski lift and trail networks in the world.
A daily ski pass for the network costs €38.
The Ski Company is a network of top British instructors which runs courses and clinics at various resorts.
From a distance, their trunks are a network of "ski slope" trails where long, broad plates of dark and light gray crisscross.
