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Ski resorts to open this weekend

By William Green

The early outbreak of winter weather has prompted several Austrian ski resorts to plan to open in the very near future.

Planai in Styria announced today (Fri) it would open on Saturday, the earliest date in history.

Planai chief Ernst Trummer said: "The earliest previous opening was on 26 October 2007, but this year it will be 17 October. We will not incur any additional cost by doing so since we are still operating our lifts according to our summer plan. There is half a metre of new snow at the top, and the low temperatures will enable us to use our snow cannons."

Trummer has invested 16 million Euros at Planai and Hochwurzen for snow-making equipment and the first eight-person chair lift in Styria.

Visitors to Planai this weekend who have its "summer card" will be able to use the lifts for only 17.50 Euros a day if they spend the night there.

The Turracher H�he ski resort on the border of Styria and Carinthia is also planning to open partially this weekend, and Austria�s eastern-most ski resort, Semmering in Lower Austria, will do so on 23 October.

The Styrian Tourism Agency (STG) said today cross-country trails were already open at Ramsau at the foot of the Dachstein.

Such resorts, however, may be jumping the gun if a weather forecaster is correct.

Claudia Riedl, from the Central Agency for Meteorology and Geodynamics� (ZAMG) office in Salzburg, said today she had received many calls from ski-lift operators asking her if it would be safe to begin the coming ski season in the near future.

Riedl said she had advised them not to since a warm "F�hn" wind from the south would raise temperatures and cause all snow below 2,000 metres to melt from the middle of next week.

The air temperature at 3,000 metres, she claimed, would be above four degrees by then. Only glacier skiing areas would be safe from the warmer air, she noted.

Ski resorts are not the only places to have gotten new snow, of course. Up to 10 centimetres of new snow fell in Lower Austria�s Mostviertel and five centimetres in the province�s Waldviertel today. Chains were made mandatory for lorries weighing more than 3.5 tonnes on some mountain roads.

Authorities in Upper Austria said that almost all roads there were snow and ice-free. There was a little new snow in Tyrol this morning, but it did not cause any traffic problems.

For the first time this season, authorities warned this morning of the danger of avalanches, especially on steep, smooth slopes.

Austrian Times

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