J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by J2SkiNews

Ski areas in Australia have confirmed their expected 2020 season opening dates over the past 24 hours since he governments of both New South Wales and Victoria, where most are located, confirmed ski areas could open from June 22nd.

Not all will open on Monday the 22nd although several are aiming to. Others say they'll aim to start the lifts running on Wednesday 24th or Friday 26th.

Currently Mt Buller, Mt Baw Baw and Thredbo say they aim to open on the 22nd whilst Perisher, Falls Creek and Hotham (all owned by Vail Resorts) say they'll open on the 24 June. Mt Hotham is pictured above on May 1st this year.

Australia's highest ski area Charlotte Pass will have company operated accommodation open from Thursday 25th June, with the expected commencement of mountain operations from Friday 26th June.

Mt Selwyn had said it would remain closed for rebuilding during the 2020 season anyway, due to bushfire damage which destroyed lifts earlier in the year, even before the virus became an issue.

As with ski areas opening in other parts of the world, the areas are stressing the 'new-normal' on the slopes will include reduced numbers, advanced online ticket sales only, allowed on the mountain, social-distancing, increased cleanliness measures and so on.

The Australian ski season traditional begins on the Queen's Birthday long weekend, which includes a Monday public holiday, this year on the 8th, at the start of June. So opening is 2-3 weeks later than it would have been without the pandemic.

Australia is the second major country to confirm resorts are re-opening following New Zealand. Here too resorts are opening typically 2-3 weeks later than planned. First, and possibly first for the 2020 southern hemisphere winter will be Mt Hutt on June 12th.

Elsewhere in the southern hemisphere it remains unclear when or if ski areas will be able to open in the Andes where the virus spread is currently increasing. Chile appears to have particularly bad infection stats. Argentina has a hard lockdown and one ski area there, Las Lenas, has said it won't open this season even if that's eased at some point so it could.

In Southern Africa Lesoho has come out of lockdown and its Afriski area says it will open June 18th, a fortnight later than planned. It is reliant on business for South Africa, where the region's other ski area, Tiffindell, is located. However he lockdown currently continues there.

Skiers are back on the slopes in Austria today as the Hintertux, Kaunertal and Kitzsteinhorn glaciers re-open. The Kitzsteinhorn announced it has created a small terrain park.

All have social distancing and other virus-spread-prevention measures in place.

They're the first of around a dozen glacier ski areas in Austria, France, Norway and Switzerland opening over the next few weeks – more of less the same total as normal.

In fact the Austrian glaciers are no the first to re-open in the Alps, Kanin in Slovenia re-opened its upper slopes, overlooking the Adriatic sea, a fortnight ago and staged the Slovenian Big Air Snowboarding National championships at the weekend. Although not FIS sanctioned this is believed to have been the first national championships staged since the mass cancellation of events in early March. It will close for the season again this coming Sunday.

Yesterday Crans Montana announced it would join Zermatt in re-starting the Swiss ski season on June 6th, when a fourth Austrian area Molltal, is due to re-open, as well as Val d'Isere and Les 2 Alpes in the French Alps.

Three glacier ski areas will also be open in Norway from the start of June and Italian skiers are hoping Passo Stelvio will be able to open – it is currently booked out by the Italian Ski Federation for race training through June.

Riksgransen in Sweden has also announced in plans to reopen for midsummer skiing, including skiing between 10pm and 1am under the midnight sun, from 18th to 21st June.

Across the Atlantic four US ski areas have announced they'll be open from the start of next week. Arapahoe basin in Colorado and Timberline in Oregon are already open, they'll be joined by Crystal Mountain in Washington state and the Beartooth Basin summerski area in Wyoming from Monday.

In Japan the Gassan summerski area is also due to reopen from Monday.

The southern hemispere's2020 ski season is due to get started on June 12th at Mt Hutt in New Zealand with ski areas in Australia and new Zealand opening through the latter half of next month, as will Afriski in Lesotho.
So far there's no news on opening dates for Argentina, Chile and South Africa.

With most borders still closed and travel impossible, difficult and generally no advised for non-essential reasons, centres are mostly open for locally based skiers and boarders as well as national team training.

Some ski areas like Hintertux, Molltal and Zermatt are aiming to stay open daily right through the summer and autumn in to 2021, others including Crans Montana and Crystal Mountain are re-opening for short periods of just a week or so partly, they say, to cheer up local skiers, after the lockdown.

The Italian Ski Federation has made a formal request that the Alpine Skiing World Championships due to take place in Cortina d'Ampezzo next winter be postponed to March 2022.

This would place them a month after the Beijing Winter Olympics and 11 months before the Meribel-Courchevel 2023 Alpine Skiing World Championships

A postponement, a response to the coronavirus crisis which already resulted in the cancellation of the World Cup Finals that had been due to be staged in Cortina d'Ampezzo in March as the culmination of the 2019-20 World Cup series, would be the first since the Sierra Nevada Championships of 1995 were postponed to 1996 due to a snow drought.

The Cortina Alpine Ski World Championships are currently scheduled for 7-21 February next year and Cortina is also due to host Alpine racing for the 2026 Milan-Cortina Olympics.

There have been media reports that the FIS have also been considering staging all World Cup races in Europe next winter to minimise the need for athletes to travel.

Following the decision of Norway's three glacier areas to open this month, along with summer ski areas in the USA, next up is Austria, where three resorts plan to open from next Friday, May 29th, a fourth, a week later.

The Austrian glacier areas due to re-open this week are Kaunertal (pictured above), the Kitzsteinhorn Glacier above Kaprun and Hintertux, with the Molltal Glacier re-opening a fortnight earlier than planned for an 11 month long 2020-21 season on June 6th.

The areas have been scrambling to get measures in place to operate safely under the 'new normal' and the Hintertux glacier, which currently reports a 315cm base and snow falling, is one of the first to get some details out of what skiers can expect. And with most borders still closed they're likely to be local skiers initially at least.

Hintertux says around nine runs will be open served by about ten of its gondola, chairlifts and T Bars. Altogether 26km of runs will be open.

But with only a few days to go to re-opening, the resort says it does not yet have formal guidance on what the social distancing rules should be for lifts.

"Unfortunately we are still waiting for the guidelines and measures of the authority regarding the hygiene and behaviour measures for cable cars. (Once we know) we will inform you about it immediately," a resort statement says.

Where lifts have already re-opened in other countries including Norway and Slovakia, maximum capacity for cabin lifts has been around 20-25% if the people boarding don't already live together; with one person at a time using a T Bar and smaller (2-3 seat) chairlifts. Then two users on larger chairlifts (4 to 8 seats) sat at either end of the chair.

Canada's winter season traditionally lasts until about now with Sunshine ski area near Banff, Alberta (pictured above with heavy snowfall this weekend) and Whistler in BC traditionally the final two areas to end their ski seasons in the latter half of May each year.

Of course 2020 is different and both areas closed months ago due to the pandemic, along with most other North American ski areas.

There is however still some hope that lift-accessed snowsports might make a limited return to Canada this spring or summer, maybe. Much depends on the easing of lockdowns in BC and Quebec – how fast they happen and what the rules are as they're eased.

In BC Vail resorts have not yet ruled out Blackcomb Glacier opening for is traditional summer ski season from early June to mid-July. On their website it says that opening and closing dates remain to be decided.

Operators of summer camps on the glacier remain optimistic that summer skiing and boarding may happen and that a decision will be made imminently.

In a separate development the resort of Mont Saint Sauveur in Quebec has announced that it is hoping to open its summer snow park if the provincial government eases the lockdown to an extent that it's considered safe to do so.

Whilst stressing that safety is paramount the resort, which has run a summer snow park for the past few years, says there's currently enough snow left to open a small snow fun area.

"If we have the OK from the government authorities and the Government du Québec, we will open for skiing one last time. This is our greatest desire. The finish was crazy for our sport and as long as there's snow, we'll want to ski!" a ski area statement reads.

If anywhere does re-open it's likely to be for Canadians only. The country's borders remain closed and there's talk of quarantine periods for non-Canadians arriving once they re-open.

The half-dozen ski areas still open in Norway are reporting superb powder skiing this week after a major snowstorm hit the country's ski centres at the weekend.

Two of the country's glacier areas reported a metre of snow landing in 48 hours. One of them, Galdhopiggen, had been due to open for its 2020 season on Saturday but delayed to Monday due to the extreme weather.

Another, Fonna, which is already open was closed for three days before re-opening on Tuesday and declaring this a 'powder week' and recommending skiers arrive with snorkel and sunscreen as the weather is now sunny.

Fonna is currently posting the world's deepest base (for some years) lying more than 15 metres deep.

It's believed to be the first time since mid-March that ski areas have been closed by snowfall rather than the virus.

A number of other Norwegian areas have re-opened for the past month after restrictions there were eased in mid-April. Hovden, Myrkdalen near Voss and Roldal ski areas are among those to have re-opened. However late May is also getting late for non-glacier ski areas to be open, even with the fresh snow, and some others have already closed again, whilst several of those now open will close (again) for the season on Sunday.

The only other ski area open in Scandinavia, Riksgransen, is also due to close then, having been the only centre to operate through the pandemic. It has confirmed it will re-open for is traditional midsummer skiing weekend in a month's time however.

With possibly only the two glaciers in Norway, Kanin in Slovenia, and one ski area in Oregon due to be open next week it may again be the lowest number of ski areas to have been open on the planet in the history of modern skiing. There is a chance however that more centres will re-open at very short notice and some non-glacier areas in Norway may continue to operate.

The numbers will start to grow from the end of next week however with more glacier areas due to open in the Alps and Scandinavia followed by the first southern hemisphere centres a few days later.

The giant Portes du Soleil ski region which includes the ski resorts of Avoriaz, Chatel, Les Gets and Morzine and offers 600km of slopes spreading over the French/Swiss border has announced it will be selling 5,000 season passes at less than half-price on Friday, May 29th, 2020 at 8am local time (7am in the UK).

The offer price of €499 (approximately £444) is a little under half the regular cost of the passes which comes in at €1,028

The deal is clearly of most interest to skiers based in the region, however it looks like the cost will be lower than a 14 day lift pass is likely to be, so may appeal to those planning a longer trip, or multiple trips. The region has not yet published 2020-21 pricing but last winter a 14-day adult ticket was priced at €508.

The passes will be sold on a first-come-first-served basis, the area says, advising skiers "Be ready!"
At the present time it is unclear what travel will be like to and from the Alps next winter and how slope access may be limited if the pandemic is still ongoing at that point, if at all.

Very true. To be clear there will be limits on numbers of people using individual lifts and going in to mountain restaurants etc in line with social-distancing requirements. They're just saying they won't limit the number of people turning up to ski in the way they have been doing at most areas that have re-opened so far in Europe and North America.