Mt Norquay at the weekend
Canadian resorts have been opening early, in some cases the earliest ever, thanks to fresh snow and cold temperatures for snowmaking.
Mount Norquay in Banff was the first to open last week, it's earliest ever opening, thanks to low temperatures and a combination of 30 cm of natural and manmade snow providing the best opening skiing conditions ever.
Nakiska which was the first ski area in Canada to open in 2011, opened 24 hours later on 27th/ 28th October.
Following closely on the heels of Mt. Norquay is the Lake Louise Ski Area and Sunshine Village with opening dates currently scheduled for November 9th. Marmot Basin in Jasper is also due to open on 9th November. It and the Banff resorts will all stay open to next May, 2013.
Other resorts like Fernie and Kicking Horse may open early according the Matt Mosteller, marketing boss for owners Resorts of the Canadian Rockies.
"Stay tuned," he told local media "There's close to 50 centimetres in the bowl at Fernie and Kicking Horse right now. With that much snow, that says to me that the alpine snow is here to stay now. So winter is locked down."
Meanwhile further West it's just over three weeks to Whistler's official opening day of November 22 and the resort reports that snowmaking crews have already turned over 20 million gallons of water into snow already thanks to cooler than normal temperatures and 150 machines have been pumping out snow 24 hour a days since October 20. In addition to that, Whistler has already received snow to the valley several times.