The Finnish ski resort of Ruka up in Lapland will open for its 2017-18 ski season at 9.30am tomorrow.
Ruka has one of the longest ski-seasons of any resort without a glacier (and many with glaciers) open from early October to early May - for eight months a year.
It used to open for nine months, to early June, but has closed earlier the past few seasons and cannot really continue to claim to have the longest ski season in the world of a non-glacier resort, overtaken by America's Arapahoe Basin and Mammoth Mountain last season.
Ruka opens early by storing huge amounts of snow under sawdust and tarpaulins all summer then unwrapping the snow piles when temperatures drop - they're close to freezing now.
Piste bashers have been busy speading the old snow around on the slope. Ruka hopes it will soon be cold enough for natural snowfall and for snowmaking machine to work to top up the old snow.
One run will be open until 7[pm tomorrow,. a second should open at the weekend and local ski teams will begin training next week.
Geilo in Norway already opened a run using the same technique a week ago and Kitzbuhel aims to do the same thing in the Alps in a week's time.
