Messages posted by : J2SkiNews
Record warm temperatures and strong winds are being blamed for a growing number of Australian ski areas announcing that their seasons are over, 3-5 weeks earlier than they'd wished. Selwyn ski area announced a week ago that it was closing temporarily due to the conditions but said that it hoped to reopen if conditions allowed. It's now announced its season is over. It's since been joined by Mt Baw Baw, Mt Buller and Mt Hotham, most saying that this Sunday September 1st will be their final day of winter operations. Some parts of Australia saw record high winter temperatures touching +38C in recent weeks and although base depths had been bolstered by snowfall in late July and early August, the snowpack could not with stand the warm weather. Ironically though and Antarctic blast of cold and snow is expected to start next week, however the better weather is expected to be short lived.
Falls Creek, Perisher and Thredbo remain open with no early closure announcement yet, however base depths have dropped by a third in the past week and terrain open has also dropped dramatically to 15-40% of their full areas. |
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In a major recycling initiative, French ski area Val Cenis, has managed to save 90% of the raw material needed to build a new high-speed quad chairlift by recycling parts from other lifts. Lift manufacturer Poma undertook the plan to build the new Roches Blanches lift in as environmentally, friendly way as possible, in keeping with the wider strong green ethos of the Haute Maurienne Vanoise region where Val Cenis is located, located between the Vanoise National Park and the Italian border. The works undertaken by Isère-based Poma, involve the use of second-hand equipment made up of parts bought from other resorts (cable elements, seats, stations etc.) with most of the 90% of savings made in needing less new steel. In total only 35 of the 400 tonnes of equipment (cables, nuts and bolts and station roof) were manufactured specifically for the Roches Blanches chairlift project. The new lift, which is an upgrade from a fixed grip to detachable quad will also have 14 pylons instead of seven. It will also cut ascent time on the route from around 14 minutes to under 6 minutes whilst almost doubling capacity from 1267 to 2400 people per hour. Keeping with the circular economy ethos, once dismantled, the former chairlift being replaced, with its 21 pylons and 116 seats, will either be sold for spare parts or in turn be recycled. |
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The latest stage of a long running contest between two famous US ski towns is set to go down on October 12th when Park City, Utah, will aim to win back the record for the most people drinking a shot from a shot ski simultaneously. In fact, it's not just one shot ski but a ski in hundreds of sections lined up along side each other down main street. Park city has been battling Colorado's Breckenridge for the title for years now with both ski towns raising large sums for charities in the process. Last year's event in Park City set a new world record with a 900 metre (2,950-foot) long shot ski serving 1,363 shots simultaneously using 551 skis end to end. It raised over $40,000 for the local Rotary Club's grant program. 1,363 shots were downed simultaneously. The local High West Distillery serves the High West Double Rye whiskey poured in to the 1300+ shot glasses balanced on the section of ski are this year's 8th annual Park City Sunrise Shot Ski is aiming to raise $60,000 for local grant programs. This year participants are asked to donate $30 for their place in the line and shot of whiskey.
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Rumours are flying that US Group Vail Resorts is planning to snap up more Swiss centres following its acquisition of Andermatt then Crans Montana. Laax and Verbier are the two names being bandied about the most. Swiss newspaper Blick reported on speculation, meetings and insider reports of meetings between Laax management and Vail executives but note neither side will comment either way. Pierre Besson, the head of the Magic Mountains Cooperation which sells a kind of Swiss version of Vail's Epic Pass told Blick that Vail Resorts has five to six resorts in Switzerland and Austria in mind. Meanwhile Vail Resorts itself has announced that Crans-Montana Mountain Resort is scheduled to open to skiers and snowboarders as early as 16th November, followed by Andermatt-Sedrun on 14th December, conditions permitting.
Vail resorts own 42 resorts at present. Most of them are in the US but besides its Swiss resorts it also owns Whistler Blackcomb in Canada and three leading Australian resorts. Laurent Vauchet, CEO of Televerbier, denied that Vail Resorts was buying Verbier in an interview with The Ski Podcast in March 2024. |
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The world's new largest indoor snow centre has opened in Shanghai. It's currently in a "soft-opening" phase with full operations set to begin on September 6th. Currently known as L*SNOW, the project has been on the drawing board and under construction for almost a decade. Originally named Wintastar, it has 90,000 square metres of indoor snow space, about 20,000 more than the previous largest in the city of Harbin in Northeastern China, which opened in 2016. For skiers the centre has three main runs of up to 450 metres in length and nearly 100 metres of vertical. The main S Curve descent is reported to have gradients of up to 22 degrees making it the steepest yet indoors. An indoor gondola takes skiers to the top of the runs and there are also chair and conveyor lifts, including the first indoor eight seater chair. 
The complex also contains and large non-ski snow play area and a water park section of the vast building is set to open, partly on the roof, in 2025. The roof is also covered in solar panels which are in different colours to create a mural of a skier for passing aircraft. The facility has three international hotels with 1,000 bedrooms between them and includes the possibility of year-round ski-in, ski-out accommodation.  |
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Although most FIS World Cup Tours won't kick off for several more months on European glaciers, the 2024/25 FIS Snowboard Park & Pipe season gets underway later this week before the end of August. Men's qualifiers will get the ball rolling at the Cardrona slopestyle World Cup in New Zealand on Friday, 30 August. With women's qualifications and men's semifinals set to go down on Saturday, 31 August, and finals for both the women and men slated for Sunday, 01 September. This weekend's competition marks the first time FIS Snowboard has been on the scene for World Cup competition in New Zealand since the pre-pandemic 2019/20 season. Preliminary entries major international names including Eileen Gu (CHN), Alex Ferreira (USA), Marcus Kleveland (NOR) and Dusty Henricksen (USA) as well as local talent including Zoi Sadowski-Synnott, Nico Porteous, Luke Harrold and Lucia Georgalli of New Zealand. The Cardrona Parks crew have been busy building the Winter Games NZ courses, including Australasia's only full-length World Cup halfpipe.
The current forecast is for one of the snowiest periods of the season to date in New Zealand going into the weekend. |
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Ski areas in California have been celebrating an early, light August snowfall ahead of the 24-25 ski season. The brief snow shower, the result of an unusually cold front moving in after months of hot, dry weather, was reported on ski areas on Californian coastal mountains, including around Lake Tahoe, with Northstar pictured above, and at Mammoth Mountain to the south, pictured below. The short-lived snow followed similar early falls reported on high slopes in the Canadian Rockies at resorts including Sunshine near Banff, and on Colorado mountains including Long Peak. There are currently no ski areas open in North America with Timberline in Oregon, the last centre that had still been open from the 23-24 season, closing a week ago. High-altitude ski areas are expected to start snowmaking towards the end of next month if conditions allow with the aim of opening from mid-October with Banff's Mt Norquay fixing the earliest definite target opening date, November 1st, if none manage to open before it.  |
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The Powdr Corporation, which is one of the world's largest multi-ski-resort operating groups, has sold one of its eight US and Canadian ski areas and wants to sell three more. The largest ski resort on the US East coast, Killington, has been sold and Powdr is reported to be looking for buyers for three more of its resorts, Oregon's Mt Bachelor, Eldora in Colorado and Silver Star in BC Canada. Killington has been owned by three successive large multi-resort groups for the past four decades, with Powdr running it the longest, some 17 years, but unusually it has been sold to local investors rather than another big group. Powdr have stressed though that anyone, including other multi-resort groups, are welcome to bid for their three resorts still for sale. Powdr plan to hold on to several of their world class resorts including Copper Mountain in Colorado and snowbird in Utah, along with their Woodward freestyle facilities which have been expanding across North America and with the latest facility planned for Australia. Two other smaller ski centres it has owned for nearly three decades in California, Boreal and Soda Springs, are not for sale. Powdr told North American media it wants to intensify its focus on a smaller number of areas whilst diversify into more summer, non-ski outdoor recreation opportunities. |
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