17 June 2010 - 13:23 Southern hemisphere season gets underway

Resorts in Australia, New Zealand and South America are getting ready for the southern hemisphere winter. Fresh snow across Australia's ski areas has helped the 2010 season off to a positive start at the weekend when the country's resorts began opening. Perisher in New South Wales was the first to open on Friday.

Mt Buller, Mt Hotham, Thredbo and Falls Creek have also opened while in New Zealand, the conditions are some of the best in the southern hemisphere. Mt Hutt was the second resort to open last weekend, a week after Coronet Peak and most of the country's other areas are opening over the next two weekends. Most have at least a meter of snow lying ready for a good start to the season.

In South America more resorts are opening too. The ski areas of El Colorado and Valle Nevado in Chile are already open with more snow expected in the next few days. Portillo has delayed its plan to open on Saturday (19th) by a week to the 26th and resorts in Argentina are expected to do so shortly as well.

In Southern Africa it's business on at Tiffindell in South Africa and at Afriski in Lesotho.

In Europe, Les 2 Alpes is the first of France's three ski areas that offer summer glacier skiing and boarding to open for the season, on Wednesday 16th June. Glacier ski resorts in Austria, Italy and Switzerland remain open. In Northern Europe, Scotland's Cairngorm and Finland's Ruka finally ended their long seasons last week leaving only Norway with ski slopes open on its three glaciers of Folgefonn, Galdhoppigen and Stryn.

In surprise news a second Canadian resort will be joining Whistler for snow sports next weekend. The Blackcomb glacier re-opens for summer snow sports from June 19th through to July 25th, but over on Vancouver Island, Mount Washington has also announced it will re-open its snow slopes, at least for the weekend of June19th/20th, at the start of its summer season.

Mount Washington was top of the world snowfall table for most of last winter with over 6 meters lying and the resort had over 15m of snow through the season.
"The running joke at the end of the winter season at Mount Washington was that the snow would last until June and you would be able to ski and snowboard the opening day of summer operations. Joking aside, Mount Washington is announcing it will indeed open for skiing on the first weekend of summer." said resort spokesperson Brent Curtain.

Contributed by Snowinfo.com
June 17, 2010