WORLD SNOW ROUNDUP #197
Issued: 23 June 2021
By Patrick “Snowhunter” Thorne
European Roundup
North American Roundup
Asia Roundup
Southern Hemisphere
WORLD OVERVIEW
It is another week of weather and virus headlines for ski areas all over the world. Tuesday, June 29th saw the first ski area open in South America this year meaning we’ve entered that period when ski areas are open on six continents, which lasts for a few weeks to a month each year. For the Andes, the more important thing is a ski area has opened in June when last year the first opened in August. Snow (lack of) and pandemic rules have caused issues but the season is now underway.
Over in Australia and New Zealand, it is snow (lack of) and the pandemic (spikes of the Delta variant in major Australian cities) causing problems. Again, things look better, than a year ago (particularly in Australia) with all areas open. But New Zealand areas have had problems opening much terrain due to a lack of snow cover and now there are far fewer Aussie skiers to help centres break even with Sydney based skiers on lockdown and the quarantine-free travel bubble temporarily closed. The lockdown will hopefully be short-lived and there’s been an ‘Antarctic-blast’ for New Zealand so hopefully, things will soon improve.
North of the Equator things are fairly ‘as they should be’ for this time of year with about a dozen areas open in Asia, Europe, and North America. Temperatures have been getting very hot though, particularly in the Pacific Northwest where the one remaining North American area still open is located, so it has had to make some unscheduled closures in recent days as the mercury neared record highs around 100F in the valleys below.
EUROPE INTRODUCTION
Now midsummer is behind us the nights are, very slowly, starting to draw in and we are on the home stretch to the start of winter 21-22 in the Northern Hemisphere. Well, that’s what those of us that are snow and skiing/boarding starved can tell ourselves anyway, even if the main season start is still nearly six months away!
About a dozen ski areas do remain open for skiing into July with no change on a week ago and, hopefully, little change in the ‘open list’ likely for the coming month. Just one or two glacier areas scheduled to close for a few months until reopening in the autumn, although against that one or two others are set to re-open.
That said, we have lost one more 21-22 season survivor with the highest slopes of Slovenia at Kanin finally closing for the season having re-opened for weekends through June.
ALPS
ALPS REPORT| Eight glacier areas are currently open in the Alps, three each for Austria and France, one each for Italy and Switzerland.
Snow depths have been declining as the summer heat starts to take hold even above 3,000m, but the year-round Hintertux (0/425cm / 0/170”) continues to post the deepest base in the region and second deepest in the world for an open resort. It also has one of the largest ski areas currently open anywhere with 20km (13 miles) of slopes accessible.
Tignes (0/180cm / 0/72″) also reports 20km of slopes open, the largest of any resort open in France at present. Its neighbour, Val d’Isere’s (0/180cm / 0/72”) glacier, has 6km (4 miles) of slopes and ends its 2021 season the weekend after next, whilst Tignes should stay open all month. Les 2 Alpes 0/1230cm / 0/52″) is the third French area open but is reported to have only about half of its 30km of terrain open at present.
Zermatt (0/150cm / 0/60”) is the other year-round ski area and only one currently open in Switzerland, plus the only one in the world to have stayed open daily for over a year now (except for bad weather) since the first pandemic lockdown. It is the third in the Alps to report 20km (13 miles) of slopes open, including the highest in the Alps.
You can ski from here over to Italy’s only fully open area, Cervinia (0/150cm / 0/60”), with cross-border skiing and lift ascents permitted once more. Italy’s Passo Stelvio (5/190cm / 2/76″) is also open but it’s believed this is only to people staying at the hotels on the pass, not to day-trippers, at present.
The other Austrian areas open are the Kitzsteinhorn (0/205 / 0/82”), above Kaprun, and the Molltal Glacier (0/310cm / 0/124”), in Carinthia.
The weather? Glorious sunshine for most and classic overnight freeze, daytime thaw conditions, with the snow most skiable in the early part of the morning. The temperatures even at 3,000m got to +5C and even a few degrees higher in the middle of the day at the start of this week.
ALPS FORECAST| Predominantly sunny for the week ahead, daytime highs of +3C at 3,000m, but mostly sub-zero temperatures. As usual, there’s always the chance of light snowfall as local microsystems arise with the heat and moisture mix. But if any rain does fall it will most likely just be a few millimetres over a few hours.
SCANDINAVIA
SCANDINAVIA REPORT| Two of Norway’s glacier resorts, Folgefonn (300/400cm / 120/160”) and Galdhopiggen (30/130cm / 12/52”), remain open. Both have reported mostly sunny skies but good conditions this past week. Finally, it’s worth a note that Ruka, in Finland, which has the longest season in Europe for a non-glacier resort (clocking up 220 days of operations last winter, 7.5 months), posted on Tuesday that it was 1900 days until its 21-22 season is due to start on October 9th.
SCANDINAVIA FORECAST| Sunny mid-week with temperatures in the daytime reaching double-digits above freezing and not getting below freezing overnight either. Possibly heavy rain to end the week before a cloudy start to next week.
NORTH AMERICA
NORTH AMERICA REPORT| The sole North American summer ski area still open, The Palmer snowfield at Timberline (0/80” / 0/200cm) on Mt Hood in Oregon, closed at noon on Sunday, after what the area said were record high temperatures for the region were forecast. It was closed again on Monday.
The centre reported overnight temperatures of 70 degrees Fahrenheit with 50mph hot east winds. This is causing rapid melting in all areas of the snowfield. Highs in the valleys below were 95F (35 Celcius) on Sunday 27th and 99F (37 Celcius) at Government Camp, the town closest to Timberline Lodge and the ski slopes above.
“Due to extreme heat, we will be closing skiing and snowboarding at noon on Sunday, June 27th and there will be no terrain parks open this day. We are sorry for the inconvenience but we have never seen temperatures like this in our region,” a statement from the ski area said.
The centre, which is currently the only lift-accessed ski area open to the public in North America, acts as a summer training area for ski teams and said that as of this week these teams would have exclusive access to the slopes for morning training until 9.30 am when the slopes would open to the public.
Normally, Timberline aims to stay open to the US memorial day long holiday weekend at the start of September, but some years it doesn’t make it if the snow cover does not last.
Of the two other North American ski areas often open in June, the Blackcomb Glacier at Whistler, has been closed the past two summers for snowsports due to the pandemic and before that was facing questions about the impact climate change was having on its snow cover. The other, Beartooth Basin summer ski area on the Montana/Wyoming stateline, did open in late May “whilst the snow lasts” but closed after only three weeks by mid-June this year.
Despite the extreme heat forecast for the Pacific Northwest this weekend, snow fell on high peaks in the Colorado Rockies. It’s here that Copper mountain has a terrain park still open, but only for people booked into their Woodward facility for summer training camps.
NORTH AMERICA FORECAST| The extreme heat should ease a little through this week, but not a massive amount and with non-stop sunshine forecast too it looks inevitable that rapid thawing will continue at Timberline.
ASIA
ASIA INTRO| We are probably into the final few weeks of the season at Japan’s Gassan (0/100cm / 0/40″) where the snow base is down to 10% of what it was on opening in early July and there are just a couple of kilometres (just over a mile) of runs open up high. On top of this Japan has entered its ‘fifth season’ of very hot, humid conditions so skiers need to cope with warm and wet conditions and often low visibility through the mist on the fast melting snowpack. Only the most determined carry on.
ASIA FORECAST| There’s more rain, warm temperatures and low cloud forecast for the Gassan region as we move further into summer and the start of July. The snowpack seems unlikely to remain complete for much longer the way things are going, inevitably.
SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE
SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE INTRO| Winter 2021 continues to gather pace in the Southern Hemisphere with the first ski areas opening for the season in both Chile and Argentina in the last few days and more centres opening in New Zealand too.
The pandemic and snow conditions continue to dominate what’s happening (or isn’t) in terms of ski areas opening.
In Australia and New Zealand the big pandemic issue this week has been the Sydney lockdown and closure of the travel bubble with New Zealand, which has had a big economic hit on operators with Sydney residents forced to cancel holidays en masse. It’s particularly bad timing as the closure period coincides with a booked-out school-holidays fortnight that is now seeing mass cancellations instead. In South America, some centres are still unable to open due to local lockdowns too.
Lack of snow cover has also been an issue, particularly in the Andes and New Zealand but both report improving conditions in recent days, with significant snowfall in South America (up to 40cm/16” reported by some areas) and an ‘Antarctic Blast’ ending the warm and wet weather that has blighted the first month of winter in New Zealand.
AUSTRALIA
AUSTRALIA REPORT| Things took a bit of a step back for Australian ski areas in the latter half of last week when hoped-for snow arrived as rain instead damaging the snow cover, which, in most cases, wasn’t that thick in the first place. Things have improved since with drier weather, cold enough to resume snowmaking, although there’s been little more natural snowfall. That said there were snowy pictures of a few more centimetres of snow for ski areas like Hotham (20/30cm / 8/12”) on Friday, and some areas got more than 15cm (6”) of fresh snowfall on higher runs ahead of the weekend; better than expected. In terms of the virus and its impact on skiers and boarders in the region, on 25th June it was announced residents of Melbourne no longer need to provide a negative virus test result to visit ski areas, but residents of some parts of Sydney now have a local lockdown due to an outbreak of coronavirus Delta variant cases. The lockdown is in force currently to 2nd July. Most areas continue to have limited terrain open but Perisher (15/37cm / 6/15”) now has 20km (13 miles) of runs open, the most in the country and about a fifth of its total area. Ben Lomond, in Tasmania, expects to be the next Aussie area to open, this coming Friday 2nd July.
AUSTRALIA FORECAST| It is looking increasingly promising as we move into July with mostly sub-zero temperatures and some light to moderate snowfall to end the week.
NEW ZEALAND
NEW ZEALAND REPORT| New Zealand’s ski season continues to build slowly but is yet to find top speed. The past week has been more ‘wintry’ and some areas reported 20-30cm (8-12”) more snowfall but said it was ‘wet snow’ so not ideal. There have also been periods of wind and rain reported by ski areas across the country. The past few days though have been much colder with an ‘Antarctic blast’ bringing more significant snow, but also ice and gales. More areas, including Coronet Peak, pushed back their opening dates as a result, but temperatures were cold enough for overnight snowmaking and The Remarkables (15/30cm / 6/12”) actually opened a few days early. They were among several centres which managed to open more terrain by the weekend. Their Alta Quad, Curvey Basin Express and Sugar Bowl Express chairs were all operating by Friday, the former two serving groomed runs for novice – intermediate skiers and riders and Sugar freeride terrain for advanced skiers and riders. Cardrona (8/16cm / 3/6”) also continued to slowly increase its open terrain after its delayed start but the size of the immediate challenge was brought home when rain closed the centre again on Friday. Treble Cone has, meanwhile ,delayed its opening planned for last weekend to, well, hopefully, any day now after the weather turned cold enough for snowmaking at least at the start of this week. Mt Dobson was one of the latest to open, last Sunday but Mt Lyford decided to delay its planned opening to at least the weekend reporting they had had snow but it was thin and had turned to ice. Against all this, New Zealand ski areas are also having to deal with the temporary closure of the travel bubble with Australia due to virus cases in Sydney which some ski areas say has led to mass holiday booking cancellations at what they’d hoped was going to be a peak period. However, one area said that a bigger problem would be if the virus got into New Zealand and they had to go into full ski area lockdown at the start of the season. Mt Hutt (25/240cm / 10/96”) continues to post the biggest area open in the Southern Hemisphere so far (20km/13 miles) and, thanks to the big fall a month ago, the most lying snow too.
After a lull over the past few days, there’s more snow forecast for the latter half of this week with temperatures remaining below freezing. Sunshine at the weekend with daytime temperatures getting up to positive numbers once more, but not too warm. NEW ZEALAND FORECAST| The ’Antarctic blast’ that brought temperatures as low as 20 below freezing along with strong winds to start the week should clear and clear skies and sunshine are expected in most areas for the rest of this week. Some more challenging conditions with temperatures well below freezing overnight but warmer in the daytime again.
ARGENTINA
ARGENTINA REPORT| Argentinian ski areas reported fresh snow at the end of last week which kept falling into the start of this, some reporting up to half a metre (20 inches) accumulating. Vallecitos was one posting 39cm (16”) of fresh snowfall by Sunday. Most are posting increasingly enticing “keep checking for exciting news soon!” messages on their social media feeds raising expectations that they would be opening imminently and most have now actually fixed dates with the continent’s largest, Catedral Alta Patagonia, near Bariloche, targeting this Thursday, July 1st, looking like it will be the first in the country to open. Another major resort, Las Lenas, which didn’t open at all last winter says it will open July 2nd, as will La Hoya and, down in the far south of the country, Cerro Castor. It has already opened at weekends for cross-country skiing. Then Chapelco, Cerro Bayo and Caviahue say their lifts will start turning again from July 9th, the weekend after next, conditions permitting. The ski season in the region usually starts by mid-June and sometimes even in late May, but ski areas had delayed opening so far, some due to pandemic restrictions, some due to lack of snow, some due to problems making enough income if they did open, some apparently due to a combination of two or three of these factors. International borders also remain closed.
ARGENTINA FORECAST| Lots of snowfall is forecast right through the coming week for many Argentinian ski areas. Subzero temperatures day and night on the slopes and rarely getting above freezing even at the base. Some big seven-day totals of more than a metre (*40 inches) of snowfall totals in the forecast for some including the biggest by uplift, Catedral.
CHILE
CHILE REPORT| Ski areas in Chile took a similar approach to those in Argentina, posting images of the fresh snowfall from the end of last week and placing “exciting news is imminent” on their social media feeds. Those dates started to firm up over the weekend with Corralco the first on the continent to open, this Tuesday, 29th June. It had previously aimed to open on the 19th and 26th June but said it had inadequate snow cover.
The news isn’t all good though, another Chilean ski area, Lagunillas, has been reporting heavy snowfall this week but said that they are currently in tier 3 of pandemic local lockdowns but that they needed to be in tier 4 to be allowed to open. Valle Nevado was one of several other Chilean ski areas closed in the same circumstances but now plans to open from Wednesday 30th, along with El Colorado. Nevados de Chillan is targeting Thursday, July 1st and La Parva says Monday, July 5th for them. Most Chilean ski areas have reported significant snowfall over the past week and low temperatures, typically remaining sub-zero, which have been transforming conditions.
International borders to Chile remain closed to tourism and one of the region’s most famous resorts, Portillo, which relies heavily on destination travellers and was closed all last winter, won’t open until mid-July at the earliest.
CHILE FORECAST| It’s mostly dry weather in the forecast for the week ahead in Chile, with currently cloudy weather giving way to more sunshine as the week progresses. Temperatures should stay low though, rarely getting above freezing for most areas.
SOUTHERN AFRICA
SOUTHERN AFRICA REPORT| Things continue to look good at Afriski (10/340cm / 4/12″), in Lesotho, where the full ski run is more or less complete now along with the snow fun park and other snowy attractions. Cold and snowy weather at the weekend and to start the week too as an added bonus. Sadly, no sign of any life still at South Africa’s only ski area, Tiffindell, over the border. It is currently missing its second successive season.
SOUTHERN AFRICA FORECAST| A week of pretty much non-stop sunshine with some quite warm daytime temperatures balanced by overnight lows of 4-8 degrees below freezing, allowing for more snowmaking as required.
