Race Is On To Open The Most Terrain

Ski areas on each side of the Atlantic are locked in an early-December battle to offer the most terrain to those visiting pre-Christmas.

In North America Colorado’s Wolf Creek has been leading the way on both open terrain – having been both the first top open on the continent and the first to report its slopes 100% open, as well as posting the deepest snow in the US Rockies.

However it was overtaken by BC’s Sun Peaks opening with nearly all its terrain available from, day one and California’s Mammoth Mountain has also opened most of its runs at the weekend.

Now though the continent’s largest area, Whistler Blackcomb, says its ready to open a lot more terrain later this week,

“Our teams have been working hard to prepare the alpine for safe openings and we’re excited to share that 7th Heaven on Blackcomb and Peak Chair on Whistler are on tap to crack next! We’re targeting later this week, Friday, but only if conditions permit us to safely do so. We will provide updates whenever we can, so stay close to our channels. Once these iconic zones open, we’ll be at 5,500 skiable acres across both mountains!” a social media post from the resort on Monday explained.

In Europe, where open terrain is measured in kilometres of slopes rather than acres of land, Ischgl-Samnaun straddling the Austrian-Swiss border opened at the weekend posting 110km (69 miles) of slopes open, the most on the continent so far and the first to exceed 100km (63 miles).

Since then the Swiss-Italian Zermatt-Cervinia region has got up to 100km but this weekend will see all sections of the world’s biggest ski area, the French 3 Valleys, open with Meribel, Les Menuires and Courchevel joining already open Val Thorens so it remains to be seen how much terrain will be open there.

The same goes for the opening of the connections between already open Tignes and Val d’Isere.