The Ski Center Latemar in the Val di Fiemme/Obereggen district of the Italian Dolomites is one of the few in the world to be debuting a new piste this season.
The new “Torre di Pisa” is described as a technical run and will provide an alternative route down to the existing “5 Nazioni“ slope in the Passo Feudo/Predazzo sector.
The run is 1,550m long and has a vertical drop of 460m with gradients of up to 59%.
The new run is served by the “Gardonè/Passo Feudo“ high speed quad chairlift and the area is included on the Dolomiti Supereski pass.
St Anton will open on 27th November and the famous Austrian resort has launched a VIP-competition to give entrants the chance to win pole position and carve the first line of the new season with ski legend Karl Schranz.
On the morning of the 27th the lucky winner will ride the Galzigbahn to the top with a glass of champagne and canapés to hand before becoming the first skier to ski the piste and officially open the season to all. The prize also includes two nights in a four star hotel and two lift passes.
The resort’s celebrations will include a party kicking off 8.45am, a spectacular ski show by the Arlberg Ski School and the chance to try out the hottest new trends for free during three days of testing for the new season’s ski, snowboard and Telemark equipment.
Enter online at www.stanton-ski-open.com
Continents With Resorts Open For Skiing: 4
Countries With Resorts Open For Skiing: 7
Ski Areas Open (Approximately): 20
* Colorado ski area opens for winter.
* More Fresh snow in Europe.
* Snow in Scotland.
* Cervinia opening this weekend.
Colorado’s Loveland ski area is claiming bragging rights as the first ski resort to open in North America for the 2009-10 season, Wednesday, October 7th. This is the earliest opening day at Loveland Ski Area in 40 years.
Loveland started making snow on September 21, 2009. “We took advantage of the cold temperatures and got an early start making snow this year. Those extra days paid off and we are opening a week earlier than last season,” said Eric Johnstone, Snowmaking and Trail Maintenance Manager. “Now we can move some equipment to other trails and try to open more terrain as quickly as possible.”
“We are proud of our snowmaking crew and extremely excited to offer the first skiing and snowboarding in Colorado and North America,” said Rob Goodell, Director of Business Operations. “Skiers and riders have been waiting all summer for this day and we are anxious to fire up the lifts. We are opening a week earlier than last year but the coverage is great! We will open with an 18″ base and tree to tree coverage on our opening day run.”
For the first turns of the season, skiers and snowboarders will have access to a top to bottom run consisting of 1,000 vertical feet via Chair 1. The trails Catwalk, Mambo and Homerun make up this opening day run which is over a mile in length.
Elsewhere other resorts across North America and Europe have reported fresh snow falling, building anticipation for the coming winter. Loveland’s neighbour Copper Mountain has begun snowmaking and the preliminary stages of its new superpipe are being laid in place ahead of their scheduled November 6th opening.
Another Colorado resort, Silverton Mountain, sent pictures of the great snow cover there already, with staff skiing the first runs of the season.
North of the border new snow has been reported at Banff and Whistler.
In Europe there is little change from last week in terms of glacier ski areas open, although reports of snow falling across mountains in the north of the continent, including Scotland, has put a smile on many skiers and boarders faces.
However the glaciers still have rather a thin covering of fresh snow in most cases following the long warm summer, with only the Swiss glaciers reporting depths above 60cm (two feet), in most other cases coverage is 15-30cm (6-12 inches).
In France the only open ski area at present is the Grand Motte glacier at Tignes.
In Italy Cervinia is due to join already-open-since-summer Val Senales and Passo Stelvio when it re-opens for weekends through October on Saturday, before returning to fulltime operations on November 1st.
In Switzerland Saas Fee, which is currently offering high-value ski test packages on its glacier, and Zermatt are open, soon to be joined by Glacier 3000 above Gstaad/Les Diablerets, glacier skiing near St Moritz and Engelberg’s Titlis glacier.
Austria continues to offer the most open glacier ski areas with Stubai, Tux, Molltal, Kaprun and Pitztal all open for snow sports.
