Kitzbühel Opens
Kitzbühel Opens
Published : 23-Oct-2016 06:06
Kitzbühel has managed to get its winter 16-17 ski season underway, the first non-glacier ski resort in Europe to do so with fresh snow, and opening less than 20 hours after Arapahoe Basin became the first on-glacier ski area in the northern hemisphere to open for the16-17 season with fresh snow.
The 'with fresh snow' proviso is an important one as two Scandinavian non-glacier ski areas have opened in the past three weeks – Geilo in Norway and Ruka in Finnish Lapland – but both are re-using snow stockpiled from the end of the 15-16 ski season.
Kitzbühel in the ninth Austrian area to open for the season, following the country's eight glacier ski areas.
It has opened for the weekend only at Resterkogel / Pass Thurn in the resort's Kirchberg sector but plans to re-open next weekend on the 29th and stay open permanently through the winter from then on.
Skiing takes place on the Resterkogel with access from Breitmoos on the Panoramabahn II cable car, open from 8.45am to 4pm.
Two ski runs: Resterhöhe No. 70 (to the Resterhöhe mountain station) and Resterkogel No. 71 are open with the lift company describing conditions as 'magnificent.'
Kitzbühel, home to Austria's largest cable car company, have continuously pushed the conventional boundaries of the ski season, particularly over the past decade since a UN sponsored report identified it as a likely early victim of climate change because its ski area is one of the lowest altitude major centres in the Alps.
This is in direct contrast to Arapahoe Basin where the lowest slopes are more than 1000 vertical metres higher than the highest at Kitzbuhel, and the upper slopes among the 20 highest in the world.
Kitzbuhel's lift company operates 1,068 snowmaking machines and has ten reservoir lakes to feed them with a combined capacity of approximately 725,000m³ It makes expert use of this technology to open ski slopes when temperatures down in resort were 10C.
Les 2 Alpes and St Moritz also opened on Saturday, with slopes on their glaciers. Arose Lenzerheide in Switzerland plans to open terrain next weekend using a special plus-temperatures snowmaking system.
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