A Foot of Fresh Snow In The Alps in June
Thursday, June 18th, 2009
There has been a foot of fresh snow at high altitude in the French Alps just in time for the re-opening of three of the country’s ski areas for summer skiing after a six-week closure.
Les 2 Alpes re-opened last weekend and will be joined on Saturday (June 20) by the re-opened Tignes ski area, which used to be open 365 days a year. Its neighbour, Val d’Isere will offer summer skiing from Saturday 27th June – all three areas will remain open until late July, weather permitting.
Summer skiing – or more popularly summer boarding – usually involves an early start to hit the eternal snow slop[es of the glacier before 8am. The ski day usually ends by about noon when warming temperatures often make the snow too stodgy, then afternoon relaxation by the pool, or summer mountain sports like hiking or biking, take over.
Austria has the most ski areas currently open in Europe with the Dachstein, Tux and Kaprun glaciers all open, the latter two with terrain parks and pipes. A fourth option in the country, the Molltal glacier, is scheduled to open this Saturday.
In Italy the Presena glacier above Passo Tonale still has a few intermediate and expert graded runs open – it’s season began last autumn and is now 7 months old. Two other Italian ski centres at Val Senales and Passo Stelvio have recently joined it.
Norway has three small glacier areas open with snow depths of up to 20 metres and a few centimetres of fresh snow reported earlier this week.
In Switzerland it’s just Zermatt that’s still open, but it is now operating Europe’s highest lifts at 3,899m and a summer ski vertical of nearly 1,000 metres – bigger than the ‘winter’ vertical offered by the largest resorts in the southern hemisphere.
