It's the beginning of the ski season as Mammoth opens

Those with the Veterans Day holiday off might want to consider heading to Mammoth Mountain ski area, which on Thursday will be celebrating opening day of their 2010–11 skiing and snowboarding season. A storm that moved through the area Sunday dropped 14 to 24 inches of snow on Mammoth, covering the mountain with an excellent base of up to 31 inches for Thursday’s opener, and mountain conditions report 2 inches of new snowfall during the last 24 hours. Temperatures in the 20s have also allowed the snow-making equipment to be operating full throttle.

Utah ski resorts including Brighton line up for early openings

All that snow the past few days is paying off — Brighton Resort has pushed its opening day up a day to Thursday. Snowbird is also moving its first day up to Saturday, a week earlier than previously scheduled. And with Solitude opening Friday, Utah’s resorts are off to one of their earlier starts in the past decade.

Three more of Scotland’s five ski areas have opened following heavy snowfall across the country, only Glencoe remains closed. Glenshee, Nevis Range and The Lecht have all opened, joining Cairngorm, above Aviemore, which has been open since November and continues to offer the most skiing in the country.

Initial snow fall over the weekend of 28th and 29th November has provided a good layer of snow with up to 40cm of snow on the high slopes and 20cm on the lower slopes of Andorra’s ski resorts. With a further 10 to 15cm expected to fall in the next few days, clear blue skies and a low wind chill factor, forecast conditions are predicted to be perfect.

Andorra will be open for the ski season from this weekend, with initial snow fall looking good. Last weekend provided a good layer of snow with up to 40cm of snow on the high slopes and 20cm on the lower slopes.

Almost all of Austria’s best known resorts will be open from this weekend onwards as the 2009–10 ski season gets properly underway. Austria enjoyed some record-breaking October snow conditions, leading to very early openings of resorts like Kitzbuhel and Schladming as well as great conditions on the country’s half-dozen glacier ski areas including Kaprun, Solden and Hintertux.

The giant Italian Dolomiti Superski area began to open at the weekend.

Conditions are looking good thanks to the heavy snowfall at the beginning of November which had already led to some of Italy’s other major resorts including Bormio and Livigno opening early.

One of Italy’s leading resorts, Val Gardena, opens on Thursday, December 3rd after the region received up to a metre (40 inches) of fresh snow on the slopes in recent days.

It is part of the giant Dolomiti Superski area, one of the world’s largest single-lift-ticket ski areas covering some 50 resorts in 12 valleys that together offer 1,200km of piste served by nearly 500 ski lifts.