North America Weekly Roundup #254

North America's Last Slopes: Timberline Set to Close After 9-Month Season

• Timberline on Mt. Hood, Oregon, is the last lift-served ski area open in North America, set to close next Sunday after a nine-month season.
• Copper Mountain in Colorado ended its summer terrain park season, marking the final closure of outdoor snow areas in the U.S.
• Ski resorts like Mammoth Mountain are already counting down to the start of the 24-25 season, with openings planned in just three months.

USA REPORT

We are into the last week of North America’s 23-24 season, with the only lift-served ski area on the continent, Timberline (0/76 inches or 0/190 cm) on Mt. Hood in Oregon, set to end its season next Sunday after nine months of operation. There’s currently a little over a mile of slopes left open high on the resort’s Palmer snowfield, with mostly sunny weather and temperatures in the 80s Fahrenheit this week. The other outdoor snow area that had been open was the hike-to terrain park at Copper Mountain in Colorado, which had started the summer as the largest they'd ever maintained. The park was used for summer camps at the Woodward Freestyle facility at the resort but was open to all from Fridays to Sundays. However, it was much diminished when its season ended over the weekend. Ski resorts aiming to open in late October or early November have started announcing that it’s only three months or similar periods until the planned start of their 24-25 seasons. California’s Mammoth Mountain noted at the weekend that it was 100 days until the start of their season on November 15th.

USA FORECAST

It looks like the final days of the 23-24 season will continue to be predominantly warm and sunny, as they have been for months now. However, a front is expected to end the week, which could see temperatures dip back down towards freezing and even the possibility of a few snowflakes for closing weekend.