The glacier at Hintertux, Austria, open for a summertime fix.
The southern hemisphere's ski season starts this coming Saturday, whilst a handful of ski areas remain open into the northern summer.
The Snow Headlines - May 29th
- North America's only remaining summer ski area is open for first time in two years.
- New Zealand (and southern hemisphere) 2025 ski season starts Saturday.
- A second Norwegian glacier area opens for the 2025 summer.
- Half the still-open US areas closed after Memorial Day Monday, but five continue into June.
- New Zealand's Mount Hutt abandons plans to start season early.
- The only remaining 'summer only' ski area in the Alps, Italy's Passo Stelvio, opens Saturday.
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World Overview
The expected early start of the southern hemisphere's 2025 ski season has fallen back towards the scheduled date (a week or two into June) as Mt Hutt will not now start its season a fortnight early this Saturday. Much of the metre or so of snow from the start of the month, which led to the early-opening announcement, has subsequently melted away.
This led to a delay until at least June 7th, the date when Australian and some Chilean areas, and probably southern Africa's Afriski area in Lesotho, are expected to open anyway.
Meanwhile, select areas remain open in the northern hemisphere with a couple of summer-only areas starting their 2025 seasons this week.
The number open in the Alps is actually up, by one, this week compared to last, but in North America, the number has halved after six of the areas open last week ended their seasons at the end of Monday's Memorial Day holiday.
Including Japan's Gassan summer ski area, there are still around 15 ski centres open across three continents in the northern hemisphere.
Europe
Alps
The number of ski areas in the Alps is actually starting to grow again, with the first summer ski areas opening in 2025.
First up, Italy's Passo Stelvio opens this weekend, due to be followed by a re-opening Val d'Isere the one after, only five weeks after its winter season ended. A handful of runs will be open on the Pisaillas glacier, which is one of the high areas that has been reporting some fresh snowfall this week.
Conditions have been unsettled across the high Alps, with strong winds and low cloud/fog also part of the mix at times.
Four more ski areas remain open, although the Molltal glacier in Austria's Carinthia is approaching their final week next week and has cut open terrain to just one run and a freestyle park whilst concentrating on stockpiling snow elsewhere ready for next autumn.
You can also still ski at Les Deux Alpes in France, on the glacier, and at the year-round Hintertux and Zermatt/Cervinia Matterhorn Glacier Paradise.
The forecast is fairly settled, with drier and warmer conditions to end the week.
Scandinavia
With Riksgransen, the last Swedish area that had been open, ending its season at the weekend, seven days after the last Finnish area open ended theirs, we are down to two Norwegian summer glaciers operating, each with a few kilometres of slopes.
There's Stryn and the region's highest, Galdhopiggen. Unfortunately, a third, Fonna, continues to face issues with its operations after being rescued from bankruptcy last autumn, and it is unclear when it will open.
Galdhopiggen posted cold temperatures and snowfall for much of the past week but it's drier and sunnier now. Stryn has gone the other way from dry to more unsettled into the weekend.
North America
We were still in double figures for open US ski areas at the start of this week, but the Memorial Day Holiday on Monday finally ended the long 2024-25 seasons of half of those, including California's The Palisades, Oregon's Mt Bachelor, Crystal Mountain in Washington State and Snowbird and Solitude in Utah.
Five centres are still going, despite daytime highs now getting into the high teens/low 20s on lower slopes – the remaining slopes still open are up high and still getting down to freezing at night.
They are at California's Mammoth Mountain, Timberline in Oregon and Colorado's Arapahoe Basin. The Beartooth Basin summer ski area in Wyoming has also just opened, two days later than planned after it was deemed an extra bit of staff training was required. That's its first operation in two years but the real surprise package is the Arizona Snowbowl planning to re-open this coming weekend for its first-ever June operation on Sunday.
The forecast, pretty much everywhere, continues to be for plenty of sunshine and warm temperatures.
Southern Hemisphere
Australia
We're just over a week away from the start of the 2025 season for most Aussie ski areas, targeting the King's birthday long weekend from 7-9 June.
Most of the country's resorts will open whether or not there's snow cover, and currently, it's unclear if there'll be much.
The past week has seen temperatures low enough overnight for snowmaking, with some very light snow flurries reported, and that's the forecast for the week ahead too.
Perisher posted 5cm of snowfall on Tuesday. "It was a wild night in the mountains last night and with it brought natural snow, which has us really excited for the upcoming season," says Madeleine McVie, Perisher's Field Marketing Coordinator. "It's also so good to see our brand new Mt Perisher 6 high-speed six-seater chairlift covered in snow for the first time.".
The week ahead looks similar to the past few – mostly dry, sunny and cold overnight.
New Zealand
As mentioned in our introduction Mount Hutt has abandoned its plan to open this Saturday after warmer weather than they'd like in recent weeks although ironically it's looking colder and snowier there and across the country for the final few days of this week.
New Zealand's season will kind of start with Whakapapa on the North Island opening its Happy Valley snow play and beginners area, maintained by all-weather snowmaking machines, this weekend.
Mount Hutt now hopes to open from the 7th, if not it's back to the original opening date of the 14th when other ski areas including The Remarkables are also scheduled to open.
Argentina
Argentinian ski areas saw more snowfalls this week with the world's most southerly resort, Cerro Castor, posting one of the biggest accumulations down near Tierra del Fuego.
It's still three weeks until the expected start of the Argentinian ski season, unless anywhere goes early, so its really just a case of hoping for more of the same.
The week ahead though looks largely dry, but temperatures should stay low in the mountains.
Chile
Chile's ski season is expected to start in several areas the weekend after next.
The signs are largely promising, if not overwhelmingly good, with Portillo among areas posting 5-20cm accumulations from the latest snowstorms at the start of the week. So most areas now have a good covering, but not a deep one.
The week ahead looks mostly sunny but with some overnight lows down towards -10C and daytime highs in the mountains not much above +5C.
Lesotho
Lesotho's ski season officially runs from June 1st to August 31st so its season may start this Sunday.
It has however been a dry and sunny week (and that's the forecast for the coming week too), so not ideal for snowmaking with daytime highs towards +8C - although overnight lows look to be about cold enough to make some snow.
Afriski no longer publishes snow reports or publish webcam images so it's hard to know exactly how close to opening a run they are.