The early closure of Norway's Fonna summer ski area has left just a small strip of thin snow open to skiers and boarders in Europe at one remaining ski area still open, Hintertux in the Austrian Tirol (library pic). It's the lowest number since summer skiing began more than 50 years ago.
The prolonged heatwave across Europe and most of the northern hemisphere, along with other impacts of climate change, has melted the snow cover from glacial ice at most summer ski areas, with much greater implications than just the loss of skiing and boarding in summer.
Ski resorts expert Chris Schrahe believes that Hintertux is still open, despite not having the highest glacier slopes in the Alps, thanks to a rare snowmaking-on-a-glacier system it has installed. This covers the 6km of slopes it still reports open with the cover 15-25cm thick and 'extremely icy' according to its snow report.
Hintertux is one of two glaciers that aim to open 365 days a year, weather permitting, the other, Zermatt, was forced to give up on that aspiration late last month. It's now one of a number of a growing number of ski areas that would like to be open now but can't and say they'll reopen as soon as conditions improve, others include Saas Fee, Italy's Passo Stelvio and Norway's Galdhopiggen glacier. But ski areas like Fonna and Les 2 Alpes that open in August when conditions are good have said their 2022 summer seasons are now over whatever happen.
Fonna has though joined a number of resorts that are keeping limited terrain open for booked race teams for training. Saas Fee and Galdhopiggen are also doing this. Reasons given are that it's 'not safe' for recreational skiers but race teams on prescribed courses can still use what's left or that terrain remaining is just too limited and priority is given to booked teams for what's left.
Next month around half-a-dozen glacier ski areas are due to start their 22-23 seasons but its unclear how many have snow left to do so on schedule if there's not a big change in conditions and the arrival of late summer/early autumn snowfalls at altitude – not unusual in the past and as recently as 2019 when some opened earlier than planned in response to metre-plus snowfall accumulations.
It is currently raining above 3,000m on many glaciers with highs of +8C but Fridays/Saturday should see temperatures drop to around freezing on glaciers and the chance of snowfall.
If Hintertux is able to stay open from next Monday it will be the only ski area open in the Northern Hemisphere as the last centre still open in North America, Timberline, says it will close at the end of the ski day on Sunday. Fonna had also targeted Sunday for closing but in the end announced suddenly it would close to the public on Wednesday due to "safety reasons."