Spring boarding at Mammoth
Seven North American ski areas, six of them in the US, will be open for the country's Memorial Day long-weekend this Saturday to Monday.
For three of them it will be their last weekend of their 2012-13 ski season, while a fourth, Aspen, is re-opening a couple of runs at the top of the mountain for this weekend only, a month after it officially closed for the season.
Those that will close at the end of the ski day on Monday include Mammoth in California and Snowbird in Utah.
"Snowbird's closing weekend celebration is a fantastic way to end the season, with guests carrying on a tradition of skiing in costumes or t-shirts and shorts," said Dave Fields, Vice President of Resort Operations.
Offering the longest ski and snowboard season in Utah, Snowbird was open for 182 days of skiing and snowboarding this season receiving 410 inches (10.3m) of snow since November 1, 2012.
Three ski areas remain open in North America – there's another week of the season left, to June 2nd, at Arapahoe Basin in Colorado, Crystal Mountain In Washington State is open weekends to June 16th and Timberline in Oregon is normally open year round, conditions permitting, apart from a short maintenance closure in September.
Whistler Blackcomb re-opens for summer glacier skiing from June 22nd - July 28th, 2013.
Closer to home there has been heavy snow in the alps with 35cm in the past 24 hours reported at Hintertux but very few centres are currently open, with just a handful of glacier options (Zermatt in Switzerland, Dachstein and the Stubai in Austria)
The Giro d'Italia cycle race had to miss its stage near Passo Tonale today – ironically the only ski area currently open in Italy – because of the snow there. No ski areas are open in France although les 2 Alpes said the new snow was good news for its coming summer ski season.
In the UK the cold weather brought 12cm of snow overnight to Cairngorm which had said last week it planned to reopen for snowsports this weekend, but has now posted on its site that a thaw in the underlying base means it has decided to call it a day on winter 12-13 despite the fresh snow.