More Ski Areas Open For 17-18 Ski Season

More ski areas have opened for the 17-18 ski season.

This morning Kitzbühel becomes the first ski area without a glacier to open in the Alps and yesterday Arapahoe Basin in Colorado opened yesterday (pictured above and below by Dave Camara/Arapahoe Basin Ski Area), the first ski area in North America without a permanent snowfield to open for the season there.

There are now around 20 ski areas open in the northern hemisphere with about half of them in Austria where Kitzbühel is the ninth area to open, joining the country’s eight glacier resorts.

In North America the near-year-round Timberline permanent snowfield on Mt Hood in Oregon has also re-opened, with fresh natural snow cover.

Cervinia also re-opens for glacier skiing and boarding today, for weekends only in October before opening permanently at the end of the month.

Kitzbühel uses snow that it stored from last season which it then spreads around on the slope to make a 2km long run in its Resterkogel area, accessed by a gondola.  The video below shows the process under way a few days ago.

 

The opening is very popular with about 1500 people coming to be amongst the first on the slopes, paying 37 Euros for an adult 1 day lift pass (10 Euros for children).

The snow conditions are also good according to the lift company’s marketing manager, Sylvia Brix

“It’s the best snow you can get because during the summer it loses a lot of water which makes it very compressed and great to ski.”

Geilo in Norway and Ruka in Finland already used the same technique to re-open slopes in the past few weeks and Kitzbühel will open a second area on the Hahnenkamm in just under two weeks.

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