Following the news from France that La Clusaz will open this coming Sunday and Monday with free skiing on its Balme mountain, an Italian ski area says it will be the first to operate in 2021 there when it opens this weekend.
The resort of Pontedilegno-Tonale in the province of Trentino will be open Saturday and Sunday with skiing on the Presena glacier, the Italian ski team have already been training there over the past week.
As with La Clusaz, limited numbers of tickets will be available and must be booked in advance online.
The French and Italian 20-21 ski seasons did get underway last October with Tignes and Cervinia both open, but both had to close late autumn as pandemic restrictions were tightened across Europe.
Ski resorts in both countries hoped to re-open at various points through the winter but the end the season passed for most without any lift-served operations. Austria meanwhile operated its ski lifts but did not allow any tourism whilst Switzerland operated ski areas as normal to a certain extent but with pandemic restrictions in place and reportedly few international visitors.
Following Les Gets and Pontedilegno-Tonale, French ski area Les 2 Alpes will open for glacier summer skiing the following weekend on 29th May and Italy's Passo Stelvio is expected to open too. Tignes and Val d'Isere will open for summer skiing in June and Cervinia is hinting it will open imminently. About 10 Austrian and Swiss glacier ski areas, along with several in Norway, are also open.
Travel is opening up across Europe in a fragmented way and with varying requirements still for evidence of testing and or vaccination and sometimes quarantine needed. The rules are changing almost daily, as are the ways skiers should interpret the rules, in both the countries they live and the countries they plan to travel to.