Autumn Ski Seasons Announced
Sunday, August 22nd, 2010
Although the majority of the world’s ski areas don’t open until late November or early December, a few dozen do open in October making it possible for families to ski in the October school’s half term if you can’t wait until Christmas or wish to avoid the crowded slopes of the February half term holidays and pay less!
In France the only ski area open throughout October is Tignes, but another glacier ski area, Les 2 Alpes has announced that it will run a new event ‘Come to Ski’ over the weekend of 23rd and 24th October. The two days will include free testing of all the new ski equipment. For boarders The Rock On Snowboard Tour will be back for the second year with the same format of tests and competitions.
In Switzerland Saas Fee and Zermatt are already open and will stay open right through the rest of the summer and autumn. Remarkably they’ve had several feet of fresh snow on their glaciers in the past few weeks. In mid-October they’ll be joined by the glacier at Diablerets near Gstaad and at Engelberg.
Austria will open more glacier ski areas than any other in October, often throwing in an ‘Octoberfest’ beer festival as well as gear testing in to the mix. The Pitztal glacier usually opens first, joining the Tux glacier near Mayrhofen which is open year round. The Stubai and Solden glaciers will also re-open, the former close to Innsbruck, the latter opening up the World Cup racing season with the first northern hemisphere ski races of the season. The Kaprun and Dachstein glaciers will also be open along with several others.
