Where To Ski or Board in Austria in October 2017

Austria has had a great start to the 2017-18 season (yes, it is already underway there!) and eight of the 15 ski centres open in the Northern Hemisphere at the start of October are in Austria.

Conditions are surprisingly good when you consider May to August were some of the hottest months ever in the Austrian Alps.  That all changed at the start of September though when some serious late-Summer snowfalls arrived giving powder snow conditions on the glaciers.

Hintertux (above) was already open, the Molltal glacier (below) which had been closed due to all that hot summer weather re-opened, Solden opened its glaciers earlier than expected and the Pitztal and Stubai (top) in mid-September.

The Kaunertal glacier (below) opened on the 22nd September and the Kitzsteinhorn and Dachstein glaciers were the latest to open on the last day of September.

The Kitzsteinhorn say they’ll open their terrain park on October 7th and produced this teaser video:

Base depths across the eight centres are in the 50-100cm bracket and most have between 3 and 10km of trails open so far although Hintertux says 22km.

October also sees an interesting approach to ‘opening early’ unveiled by several ski areas in Scandinavia and the Alps.  Geilo in Norway, Ruka in Finland and Kitzbuhel in Austria will all open way ahead of when the natural snow season starts, and also ahead of when it’s easy to do much snowmaking thanks to a technique sometimes called ‘snow farming.’  Each resort stockpiles huge amounts of snow in the spring, puts a protective cover over it to keep the summer sun off it as much as possible then pulls the wrappers off in September or early October and spreads the snow out on the slopes – hey presto they can open early!  In Kitzbuhel’s case they’re aiming for 14^th October.