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Three New Zealand Ski Areas To Start 2018 Seasons This Saturday

Three ski areas in New Zealand are to open for the first weekend in June.  Two of these are opening earlier than planned. One, Cardrona,  week earlier than their planned June 9th opening date, the other, Coronet Peak, two weeks ahead of their published June 16th opening date. Cardrona will open for a ‘bonus weekend’ on June 2nd and 3rd ahead of their planned opening day. The ski area has received 90cm of fresh snowfall over the past week so has top-to-bottom snow cover. “We’ve been absolutely frothing to get out skiing and snowboarding when it’s looking this good – and it’s amazing to be able to bring all our guests up to get their fix too,” Cardrona general manager…

snowhunter 29th May 2018
EnvironmentEventsLifestyleSki ResortsWeather

Riksgransen Cancels Midsummer Skiing

Riksgransen ski area in Northern Sweden has cancelled its annual midsummer ski in late June and will close for the season this Sunday, May 27th, not making it in to June. The resort which has a long standing reputation as Europe’s spring skiing capital is located 200km north of the Arctic Circle and on the Norwegian border has been a ski destination for about a century, since the railway line arrived here. Riksgransen is located in an area of 24 hour darkness in midwinter and does not open for its ski season until late February each year, normally ending a four month ski season with a sell-out midsummer ski festival in late June. This year however the snow cover has…

snowhunter 26th May 2018
AdventuresEventsSki ResortsTravelWeather

Beartooth Basin Delays Opening Due To Too Much Snow

North America’s only ‘summer-only’ ski area, Beartooth Basin, has delayed its 2018 season by a week due to there being too much snow. “We have so much snow! Too much in fact - all this snow has given us a big load of lift maintenance to attend to. We are now planning to open on June 2nd. Thanks for understanding. The good news is that we'll easily be skiing the Basin until mid July!” The ski area, located on the border of Montana and Wyoming, is one of half-a-dozen or so ski areas in the northern hemisphere worldwide that only open during the summer months, either because the roads that access them are closed mountain passes in winter, or because…

snowhunter 26th May 2018
Weather

Mid-May Snowfall in the Alps

There’s been heavy snowfall over the past week in the Alps.  Up to 35cm of snow was reported falling between Monday and Friday, in many cases building on snow bases still lying metres deep from heavy snowfall earlier this season. Val d’Isere (pictured below this week) reported some of the biggest accumulations, with 30cm in 24 hours at the start of the week.  This is particularly good news as the resort plans to re-open some of its winter slopes for summer skiing for the first time in its 82 year history due to the huge snowfalls it received in the winter and the snow that is still lying.  The resort re-opens to skiers in just under a fortnight on June 3rd.…

snowhunter 20th May 2018
Technique / Safety

Ski Ballet Reborn

The briefly popular activity of ski ballet was revived at an indoor snow centre recently. The weird and wonderful art of Ski Ballet will be unknown to many, but it did appear on various TV shows in February during the South Korean Olympics as a novelty feature as TV stations featured unusual snowsports from Olympics past. Consisting of a choreographed routine of jumps, spins and tricks – all performed on skis – the impressive sport of ski ballet, occasionally referred to as ‘acroski’, was alleged to have inspired the freestyle skiing we know today. Ski ballet was never officially an Olympic sport but it was a demonstration sport was competed on a World stage at the 1988 Games in Calgary…

snowhunter 13th May 2018
Ski ResortsWeather

Up to 50cm of pre-Season Snowfall in Australia

There’s been heavy snowfall in Australia four weeks before the 2018 ski season is due to begin there. The snow began falling after ac cold front moved in to New South Wales and Victoria from the south on Thursday being snowfall which continued for about 48 hours. https://www.facebook.com/Thredbo.Resort/videos/10155180984531582/   There were also strong winds which meant that the windchill was nearing -20C at times although the actual temperature was closer to -5C. These were the lowest reported temperatures since last September in the country. "When we see this sort of weather early on in the year, it bodes well for a good ski season," Suzi Diver, Thredbo communications manager claimed. There are no official snow accumulation totals as yet as…

snowhunter 13th May 2018
AdventuresLifestyleSki Resorts

World Record For Most Vertical Skied in a Season Broken

The world record for the most vertical skied in one calendar year appears to have been (unofficially) broken, almost two years to the day after it was last broken. Scott Howard, a 65 year old retiree from Vermont, USA, has passed the 6,025,751 vertical feet (1,836,649 vertical metres) record set on 10th May 2015 by Canadian Pierre Marc Jette, skiing at Whistler, British Columbia, Canada two seasons ago. Mr Howard has been skiing predominantly at Killington in Vermont, although he has also skied at another Vermont resort, Stowe, this season.   He measures his vertical using an app called Trace, but he is now hoping to make his achievement official by replacing Mr Jette in the Guinness Book of World…

snowhunter 13th May 2018 1
Weather

2017-18 Season Snowfall Review

With the 2017-18 ski season in the northern hemisphere now largely behind us, we thought it was a good time to take stock on snowfall through last season. That’s not to say the snow has stopped falling – some 30cm (12 inch) accumulations are forecast this weekend at a few of the dozen or so ski areas that are still open for snowsports including Cervinia, (the only area still open in Italy) and Snowbird in Utah, which is enjoying its final weekend of the season. Europe After three fairly warm and dry winters for much of Europe and an exceptionally hot summer 2017 which had led several summer ski areas to cease operating as all snow covering the glacial ice melted…

snowhunter 11th May 2018 1
Lifestyle

‘Ski Down the Roof’ Hotel Under Construction

Architecture firm Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG) have just revealed plans for their latest building to feature a ‘skiable roof.’ The company, which is behind the design of major projects around the world including Google’s new London HQ and the waste-to-heat power station in Copenhaghen which will feature a 600m long dry ski slope down its roof (below) and is due to open later this year , has gone for a similar theme in its design of a ‘ski out’ hotel in Switzerland. The Hotel des Horlogers in the Vallée de Joux region of the Jura Mountains will have sloping terraces zigzagging down the front of the building allowing guests to ski from their hotel room doors, or indeed the roof,…

snowhunter 6th May 2018
LifestyleWeather

Fresh May Powder in the USA

Ski resorts in California and Utah have reported powder days at the start of May after heavy snowfall in the final hours of April and in to the start of May. It has also been snowing on high slopes in the Alps with several glacier areas reporting up to 20cm of fresh snow. Snowbird in Utah and Mammoth in California (pictured below on May 1st) have posted up to 25cm (10 inches) of fresh snow.  The former is open to mid-May, the latter to at least the end of the month. (top image credit Matt Crawley at Snowbird, Utah) In the Alps Chamonix (which closed its lifts for the season yesterday) there’s been 20cm of snow in the last 72…

snowhunter 2nd May 2018