Heavy Snow at Altitude in the Alps
4th June 2024
Last modified on June 9th, 2024
More snow has been falling on an already deep base. It comes as the summer ski season approaches. We also look at where skiing is on offer across the world. UPDATED
The summer season is getting underway in the Alps with some excellent conditions.
The road up to Italy’s Stelvio Pass is reported to have partially opened on one side for the first time this year.
The summer ski area aims to open for it’s 2024 season this weekend after delay due to the snow needing to be cleared.
Here’s the Austrian glacier resort of Hintertux that is currently open for skiing and snowboarding:
Skiing is on offer for another week on the Moltaler glacier in Austria.
The Swiss Glacier Monitoring Network, Glamos, said that at the end of April 2024 there was around 31% more snow on all of Switzerland’s 1,400 glaciers than the average for the years 2010 to 2020.
See here for a full PlanetSKI report:
Last weekend over 1.5m of snow fell in parts of the Swiss and German Alps.
29 hikers needed to be rescued from Germany’s highest mountain, the Zugspitze at 2,962m, as the weather closed in.
At around 2,500 meters the hikers could not continue their ascent due to the accumulation of fresh snow, which reached depths of up to 2m in some areas.
The rescuers escorted the hikers to the Sonnalpin Glacier restaurant on the Zugspitze plateau.
The ski season in the area officially ended on May 1st and the unexpected snowfall caught many off guard.
The snow brought flood warnings in Germany and Switzerland.
Last weekend the Swiss federal government’s natural hazards platform issued a flood risk level of 3 out of 5 for the Rhine and Thur.
At this risk level, the federal government advises people to stay away from rivers.
Owing to the acute risk of flooding in the Lake Constance area around 1,300 people in Meckenbeuren, Baden-Württemberg, were advised to leave their homes.
It hindered some of the clearing of the high alpine passes that is currently taking place, with some still shut.
Despite the problems it all bodes well for the start of the summer glacier skiing season.
Other high-altitude ski areas have finally called it a day on the season of 2023/24.
Here’s Kitzsteinhorn in Austria:
Two areas remain open in the USA, Arapahoe Basin in Colorado and Timberline Lodge in Oregon.
A-Basin says it will shut on June 16th.
It is one of its longest seasons on record after opening on October 29th 2023.
In the southern hemisphere the season is already underway.
South America has the best of the snow with resorts opening early in Chile and Argentina as we have reported:
Australia starts its season with resorts hoping to open some slopes this weekend.
It has been a poor start so far but there has been some natural snow in the past few days.
If resorts can open a few slopes remains to be seen.
Resorts in New Zealand fire up their lifts later in the month.
Here at PlanetSKI we’ll be covering skiing in the handful of resorts in the northern hemisphere that are open.
Plus keeping an eye on conditions in the southern hemisphere.
Do check back…
