More ski resorts have opened in the USA ahead of the major Thanksgiving Holiday later this month and thanks to a continuing cold autumn in much of the country.
Stowe in Vermont and heavenly in California are amongst the big names to have opened in the past few days.
The US East Coast has had particularly snowy conditions over the past week with a number of resorts posting snow alerts after receiving more than 20cm of snow in a 24 hour period. Yesterday these included Windham and Belleayre in New York State.
Wildcat Mountain in New Hampshire claims to have the most terrain open in the region. So far the area has received 88cm (35 inches) of natural snow, and snowmaking crews have jumped at every chance to make snow, which they began doing on October 17.
This has allowed Wildcat Mountain to open 90% of the mountain, with 43 out of 48 trails open, 212 acres, and nearly 15 miles.
In the past seven days, Wildcat Mountain has received 48cm (19 inches) of natural, which helped to set up a good base on all trails across the mountain. Six of those inches (15cm) fell from the sky early Friday and piled up on the firm base that is needed to open natural terrain.
"It's been an incredible start to this season, and we couldn't be happier," said Brian Heon, general manager and vice president of Wildcat. "Going into the weekend, we knew we would be able to open a lot of natural terrain and give our guests the most open terrain on the East coast."