The final ski area still open for the 21-22 ski season, Timberline in Oregon, has announced it will end its 9-month opening this year on Sunday, August 21st.
The resort, which operates summer skiing on the permanent Palmer Snowfield on Mt Hood has one of the world's longest ski seasons and kept operating through spring and summer this year when many of the Western North American ski centres that usually operate to late spring/early summer were forced to close earlier than usual by the hot weather. The continent's only summer-only ski area, Beartooth Basin on the Montana/Wyoming border, also opted to skip this year.
Timberline is popular for race teams looking for summer training but also operates terrain parks and ski slopes open to all.
It will probably only be a few months after Timberline's closure that the first North American areas open for the 22-23 season.
A number of high altitude ski areas in Colorado, including Arapahoe Basin and Keystone, tend to open in late October if conditions are right. Ski areas in Alberta, California, the Midwest and Vermont have also opened in October in recent years thanks to early snowfall and/or cold weather for snowmaking.
Elsewhere in the Northern Hemisphere the last ski area opened in Asia, in Japan, ended the 21-22 season there one the final weekend of July. Four ski areas are open in Europe, two in the Alps and two in Scandinavia.