Issued: 15 September 2021 By Patrick "Snowhunter" Thorne European Roundup North American Roundup Southern Hemisphere Catedral resort this week WORLD OVERVIEW We’re moving deeper into the northern hemisphere's autumn (by the meteorological measure, the astronomical version will converge from next week) and the southern hemisphere's spring. For the first time in several months, the number of resorts open in the northern hemisphere for the start of the 21-22 season is actually growing as glacier centres start re-opening. That’s normal for this time of year, it’s less common in the southern hemisphere in September but it is the case as around 20 ski areas in New Zealand and the Australian state of Victoria have reopened thanks to lockdown easing.The big news from

There’ll be two stops in the Pyrenees on the five date Freeride World Tour (FWT) this winter with Spain’s Baqueira Beret unveiled as the new starting point for the famous tour. “If you had told me ten years ago it was possible for a skier from Spain to podium at the Xtreme Verbier, I would have said you were crazy. And now there’s going to be an FWT competition at my home mountain, Baqueira Beret!” said rising Spanish Freeride star Aymar Navarro. The 15th season of the tour will also include what the organisers describe as “progressive Tour format updates.” This include a ‘cut’ of the entrants after the first stage in Canada before two legs of finals in Austria

The famous Californian ski resort of Squaw Valley, host of the 1960 Winter Olympics, has announced it will henceforth be known as Palisades Tahoe. The name change follows a period of soul-searching by many organisations in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement and the resort says it removes a word widely considered to be a racist and sexist slur. The resort, which is in the process of building a gondola link to the jointly-owned ski area of Alpine Meadows and had most recently been known as Squaw Valley Alpine Meadows as a result, issued the lengthy statement below: “Today, Palisades Tahoe introduced its new name and logo that honour the resort’s history as a land of legends—home to

A brand-new café in Tignes ticks all the boxes for the ethical-eater with a focus on being both socially and environment-friendly, as well as offering vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free food and drink. The new Oxygène Café is run by instructors Federico Luzuy and Beatrice Davico, from the Oxygene Val d’Isère team who know Tignes and the people well having lived and worked in the area. Their ambition was to open their own ski school, with a café, in neighbouring Tignes and that dream has now become reality. Federico and Beatrice have partnered with Caffè Vergnano, a socially and environmentally-friendly Italian brand that supports coffee projects run by women. In 2018, they launched the Women In Coffee programme in partnership with

New Zealand’s ski areas have re-opened at the country’s Level 2 of pandemic restrictions on  Wednesday after what grew from an initial three-day lockdown to a nearly three-week long one, to try to suppress an outbreak of the Delta variant in the country. Most of the country’s larger centres have 3-5 weeks of the normal season left, although centres on Mt Ruapehu on the North Island usually stay open to late October or November.  For most conditions are currently among the best they’ve been all winter. Level 2 does not yet mean a return to pre-pandemic type life, which New Zealand has enjoyed for much of the past 18 months.  Instead it is more like much of the rest of