Additional ski lift added for Banff on it's 85th birthday

Banff’s local ski hill of Mt Norquay turns 85 this winter and has many great events planned throughout the season. Work on the ski area broke ground in 1926, followed by the construction of the ski lodge in 1928. Rope tows followed in 1942 and history was soon made when the mountain installed the area’s first chair lift in 1948, one of the first in Canada.

Whistler Blackcomb ski resort opens tube park and for summer skiing

Whistler Blackcomb’s Horstman Glacier has re-opened to allow summer skiing and riding until Sunday, July 25th. For the first time ever, Whistler Blackcomb will also be opening a tube park in the alpine on Whistler Mountain as snow allows. In addition the resort has announced that following its record breaking snowfall this winter, there is still more than 50 inches in some places making snowshoeing possible.

With another 20cm (eight inches) of snow falling on Whistler in the past few days, the resort’s snowfall tally since it opened for the season last autumn has passed 1,430 centimetres or 47 feet, surpassing the 2006/07 record of 1,416 centimetres or 46 feet, making this season officially the second snowiest on record at the famous Canadian resort.

Quebec’s Mont-Sainte-Anne is running its annual Spring Madness Festival through to April 25th this year. The Festival brings five successive fun packed week-ends in which live music shows, friendly competitions, BBQs, sun drenched terraces and outdoor hot tubs are the order of the day. A special low priced Spring lift pass is also on offer.

Winter plans to capitalise on worldwide publicity from the Olympic Games, which they estimate were viewed by more than half the world’s population, by opening up several of their Olympic competition venues to the paying public next winter. The Whistler Sliding Centre which hosted bobsleigh, luge and skeleton events will open a public ride program next season for visitors who want to try bobsleigh and skeleton on the Olympic track.

Sun Peaks resort in Canada’s British Columbia is one of many leading North American ski areas that cease snow operations each April when the snow still lies metres deep on the mountain. The resort likes to finish its season with a bit of fun, and stages its Spring Festival on April 10 – 11 which includes dummy’s flying down the mountain, skiing across a pond of slush and a race to ring a bell.