Ski areas in some of the countries where ski areas couldn't open at all last season, or only open limited terrain in a limited way, have opened for winter 21-22 with huge amounts of terrain open for early December.
Ski resorts in Andorra, Austria, Italy and Spain currently have the biggest ski areas open in the world, with several opening up more than 100km of slopes each – the biggest areas open anywhere since last April. Most of the areas concerned have not been open for skiing since the start of March 2020. Les Menuires is pictured top on Saturday.
Altogether more than 200 ski areas have now opened across Western Europe with more than 50 each in Austria, France and Italy.
"After a bumpy week of Covid news, we're starting to see confidence returning slowly among British skiers with some much-needed better news from the ski resorts themselves. Big dumps of fresh snow and then the Swiss removing their knee-jerk travel ban, have customers coming back to book after a week of wait-and-see. Most of my team are heading out to the Alps over the next fortnight, and our first customers to ski in a year and a half flew out to get first-tracks on Sunday. We can't wait now!" commented Richard Sinclair of ski travel agency SNO. https://www.sno.co.uk/ski-holidays/
Italy's huge Dolomiti Superski region has opened more than 600km of slopes, which include 178km at Val Gardena, the largest area open in the world at present. Neighbouring Alta Badia is also in the world top 12 with about 70km of runs open there.
In Austria the country may be in (hopefully) the final week of a 20 day lockdown but ski areas are allowed to open to lucky locals whilst tourism remains closed and Ischgl reports 126km of slopes open, the most in the Alps.
Tignes/Val d'Isère has the largest area open so far in the French Alps with 78km of runs skiable.
The Pyrenees have also had a snowy few weeks and resorts in Andorra and Spain have been opening large amounts of terrain with Formigal and Grandvalira both reporting about 90km of slopes open.
These destinations have overtaken North America's snowiest areas in Alberta and BC including Sun Peaks, Sunshine and Lake Louise which had topped the 'terrain open' table the past few weeks and have 80-90km of slopes open.
Over 100 ski areas have now opened across Europe including many of the continent's leading resorts, some opening early for preview weekends due to the currently good snow conditions.