by Patrick Thorne with First Tracks!! Online Media staff reports

Kiltarlity, Scotland, UK – It’s still warm in the Alps, which is bad news for snow cover on the 11 glacier ski areas that are currently open in Austria, France, Italy, and Switzerland. That’s down by one from last week with the scheduled end of the summer season at France’s Val d’Isere. Meanwhile, it’s the final weekend of Canada’s summer ski season as snow is piling up at resorts in the Southern Hemisphere.nThe snow has been melting fast on the four glaciers that are still open in Austria, with the Dachstein down to 70cm with two lifts and three runs open. At the Kitzsteinhorn above Kaprun there’s only 18cm on top of the ice and temperatures are expected to again hit 8ºC. The Molltal glacier still claims 1.9m (over six feet) of snow and 9.5km of slopes open, but the glacier snowpark is closed. Tux has 1.2m (four feet) of snow and temperature up to 10ºC with 20km of runs and nine lifts open.

In France, following the closure of Val d’Isere’s summer ski area last weekend, two choices remain open for another month, or so they hope – Les 2 Alpes, which has a meter of snow at Le Signal, and Tignes is still reporting temperatures rather warm at 5 or 6 degrees Celsius on the glacier with rain forecast for Friday.

It’s a little cooler in Italy, where there’s 1.4m of snow on Plateau Rosa above Cervinia and top temperatures should only be 3ºC. Val Senales has slightly less with 1.3m snow depth but more trails open, although all were currently showing closed on Wednesday. Passo Stelvio is also reported to be open for snow sports.

In Switzerland the choice remains Saas Fee or neighboring Zermatt, both of which have between 1.7 and two meters of snow depth and the same issues with warm weather on the glacier.

Hot weather in Norway has led to the premature closure of the country’s three summer ski areas, two of which normally stay open right through to autumn. At Galdhøpiggen a resort statement on Monday said, “Galdhøpiggen summer ski area is unfortunately closed because of the blue ice on the glacier. We hope to re-open the center in the autumn. We regret this situation greatly.”

Folgefonn had already closed a week earlier, “… because of too little snow.”

The third ski area, Stryn, normally remains open until late July or August, depeding on conditions, but this hassn’t been a good summer for skiing and the resort closed earlier than expected at the start of July.

“The little snowfall in winter 2010 resulted unfortunately in our early closure after a short but excellent summer ski season, on July 4th,” said a resort statement.

Across the Atlantic it’s the last week of the summer ski and snowboard season at Whistler, Canada’s only summer snow destination. The resort’s Horstman Glacier on Blackcomb Mountain remains open until this Sunday, July 25, with the best summer skiing and riding conditions seen in years.

For the first time ever Whistler Blackcomb has been offering snowshoeing and tubing in July, thanks to the record-breaking winter snowfall that has ensured plenty of white stuff is sticking to the alpine. Alpine hiking has been on hold for a few more weeks while Whistler Blackcomb has instead offered snowshoe rental and a three-lane tube park at the top of the Whistler Village Gondola.

In the U.S., only Timberline in Oregon remains open for snow sports.

In the Southern Hemisphere is is continuing cold with snow flurries at most Australian ski areas. Typical base depths are at around 40-80cm across the country’s leading ski resorts. Perisher, Australia’s largest resort, plans to celebrate “Christmas in July” this weekend.

Mt. Hotham reports that so far this winter it has produced 155% more snow than this time last year. To illustrate this, the resort suggests you imagine 111 Olympic swimming pools filled with snow. Or if you’re more of a soccer fan, that’s the surface of a soccer field covered in 13.6 meters (about 45 feet) deep in snow. Hotham uses recycled water for snowmaking and snowmelt returns to Swindlers Creek.

It’s looking good in New Zealand, too, where ski resorts are reporting base depths up to 1.6 meters. Good snow, good snowmaking conditions and a fantastic run of fine weather amounted to the busiest week in Mt. Ruapehu 57-year history for the seven days from Saturday, July 10 through Friday, July 17.

It’s cold, too, in South America where most areas have reasonably good conditions. Portillo in Chile, which has had an unusually poor start to the season, postponing the season by a week and currently with limited cover still, is reporting low temperatures (-3 to -10ºC) and snow falling with access roads closed, and more of the same forecast for the coming days, so piste conditions look set to improve dramatically. The ski area picked up six inches of snowfall overnight.

It’s very cold as well at Chile’s Valle Nevado (-9 to -11ºC), which has two feet of snow on the runs and almost all of its trails and lifts open at one of the most extensive ski areas in South America.

Over in Argentina, Las Lenas has 40-95cm of snow and the country’s other big resort, Catedral, reporting some of the continent’s deepest snow with 1.5m on upper slopes, and 5cm of fresh this week.

In Africa, Lesotho’s Afriski is still enjoying a good season despite a lack of natural snowfall thus far all winter. Instead, resort staffers have heroically clocked up 366 hours of snowmaking, creating a 600m-long slope with snow depth up to 70cm and a 200m-long beginners slope, plus a terrain park. Temperatures as low as -13ºC have helped to preserve the integrity of the machine-made snow.

In South Africa itself, Tiffindell still appears to be operating with machine made snow, too, but it’s official status remains uncertain.