J2Ski's Where to Ski in August 2024
J2Ski's Where to Ski in August 2024
Published : 03-Aug-2024 11:01
South America has led the way with snow so far this season, and heavy snow is falling there now. Australia has seen conditions improve recently, and New Zealand has new snow arriving.
Antillanca, Chile; great snow and more arriving...
Where to Ski in August 2024
Early August is the mid-point in the Southern Hemisphere's ski season, when we expect every centre to be open. By the end of the month, the season will be starting to wind down and although some centres will make it to late October, we'll see the first season endings in countries like Lesotho.
The Andes continue to post the deepest snow and most terrain open as we start August, despite not getting much July snowfall. That's thanks to the huge accumulations they saw in May and June. Australia has caught up a lot after big mid-July snowfalls there, whilst New Zealand is somewhere between the two.
In the Northern Hemisphere, there are just a handful of areas still open, with glaciers in the Alps hoping the snow cover will hold through the hottest weeks of the year and allow them to stay open through the month. All glaciers in Scandinavia have now closed to the public but four remain open in the Alps.
Only one resort is still open in North America, also battling the impact of warm temperatures on its snow cover - but planning to stay open into the latter half of August.
Southern Hemisphere
Australia
Australia's season saw a dramatic improvement in mid-July when a big snowfall of nearly a metre in 7 days allowed ski areas to open most of their terrain.
August marks the last full month of the season for some Aussie areas although some such as the largest, Perisher, which starts August with the most terrain open, aim to remain open into early October making September a full month too.
New Zealand
New Zealand has not had an epic season as yet with no massive dumps and a few centres still struggling to open at all, but the picture is "middling" because there have been some moderate snowfalls and snowmaking windows meaning the majority of centres start August with their slopes 50-75% open and a few have managed 100%.
Things have improved in the final few days of July, with the biggest storm of the season delivering over 50cm of snowfall to several ski areas.
Treble Cone is the first in the country to reach the 1m base mark on its upper slopes on July 30th.
The North Island's ski areas particularly need snow, but it is falling there as we start the new month.
All of New Zealand's ski areas should stay open through August with the first planning to close in late September and several aiming to keep operating to the end of October, snow permitting, when they'll be the last in the southern hemisphere to end their seasons.
South America
Although July was a largely dry month across the Andes, the huge snowfalls of May and June that saw most ski areas in Chile and Argentina start their seasons early - and some claim they'd had more snowfall before their season even began than they usually have in an entire season - mean that all are in good shape for the start of August.
Famous names like Portillo continue to report great conditions and everything open whilst the Tres Valles (3 Valleys) of Chile have more terrain open between the Valle Nevado, La Palva and El Colorado Valleys (About 120km/75 miles) than anywhere else in the world at present.
Over the Argentinian border Catedral near ski town Bariloche has about 100km of runs available, the second most and biggest area of any single resort.
Southern Africa
Lesotho's Afriski re-opened in June after missing last season and has had its main run fully open for the past few months. As usual, there's been little natural snowfall but overnight sub-zero temperatures and snow-making mean the run is maintained.
August is traditionally the final full month of the three-month southern African ski season and things will culminate with 'Winterfest' on the final weekend of the month at Afriski.
The region's other ski area, Tiffindell in South Africa, has not operated since winter 2019 and is currently up for sale.
Europe
Alps
There are four ski areas in the Alps planning to stay open through August, all being well.
Recent summers have seen all or most glacier ski areas forced to close, temporarily, due to snow melt from the glacial ice, but although July has seen base depth stats drop a lot, the cold snowy spring, as last year, has left conditions fairly good as we start the month.
The four open areas include Hintertux in Austria, which has been posting the largest area open in the Northern Hemisphere through July - about 20km, and its snow is still several metres thick.
Saas Fee and Zermatt are open in Switzerland as is Passo Stelvio in Italy, with Cervinia also having access to Zermatt's summer ski slopes.
None of the current four are expected to close, unless forced to, in August and no other areas are expected to open until September.
With Les 2 Alpes, Tignes and Val d'Isere all ending their summer ski seasons in July, there's currently nowhere open in France.
Scandinavia
Scandinavia's two small still-open ski areas, Folgefonn ("Fonna") and Galdhopiggen were open through July but Fonna announced close to the end of last month they'd close on the 29th leaving just Galdhopiggen, but then they too announced they'd close on August 1st (although they hope to reopen in October).
Both centres are still open to teams for training, just not private individual recreational skiers and boarders.
North America
Last year three US centres managed to stay open into August, this year it's only really Timberline on Mount Hood in Oregon, where there are a few miles of slopes and a terrain park up on their Palmer snowfield.
In years gone by this would normally stay open to a public holiday weekend in early September, but in recent years seasonal closure of the longest ski season in North America have been announced in mid-August, usually with just a few day's notice. This year though they have given a target end of season date - 22nd August, so fingers crossed they make it despite the warm temperatures.
As with ski centres in Europe, the US resort has seen its snowpack thaw increasingly quickly with almost wall-to-wall sunshine and warm temperatures through July.
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