Spain's government has approved a draft tobacco law that would ban smoking across a wide range of outdoor spaces, including sports venues - a category Spanish winter sports media expect to cover ski resorts, potentially extending to slopes and lifts themselves. The rules would also apply to e-cigarettes and vaping devices, even nicotine-free ones. The bill still has to clear the Spanish parliament before any ban, signage, or fines can take effect.
South Tyrol has approved a full rebuild of the Ciampinoi cable car in Selva di Val Gardena, replacing the current 12-person gondola with a 16-person cabin and a new mountain-station restaurant. Capacity is capped at 3,200 people an hour rather than the 3,600 the operator wanted, and 250,000 euros must go toward compensatory measures. No construction or opening date has been set, though the upgrade is partly aimed at clearing bottlenecks before the 2031 Alpine Ski World Championships.
Hoshino Tomamu is the ski resort equivalent of a conference hotel that happens to have excellent powder. Built for corporate retreats and package tourists, it offers genuine Hokkaido snow on surprisingly limited terrain - 29 runs spread across 585 vertical metres.
La Thuile is spending 38.7 million US dollars on a new 10-person cable car linking Les Suches to Chaz Dura, replacing the La Combe and Chaz Dura chairlifts after nearly forty years of service. Built by Leitner, the new cable car runs 1,950 metres to a top station at 2,576 metres, carrying up to 3,000 people an hour with a six-minute ride. It also improves the connection to La Rosiere in France via the Petit-Saint-Bernard Pass, and is on track to open for the 2026/27 season.
The Remarkables is adding new inbounds terrain for winter, bringing the Scarpa Bowl - known locally as the Toilet Bowl - into its lift-accessed network after years as backcountry-only ground. The roughly 500 metre run is reached by bootpacking from the top of the Sugar Bowl chairlift, with a shuttle picking skiers up from the road at the bottom. It's a smaller, faster addition than the resort's planned Doolans expansion, though the new terrain hasn't opened yet due to a lack of snow this season.
Ski Portillo remains isolated after an extended storm buried the Chilean resort under more than 4.5 metres of snow, with both ground and air access suspended since Tuesday while crews monitor avalanche hazards and worsening weather. Resort officials say further snowfall is expected in the coming days and haven't set a timeline for reopening the mountain road. Once access resumes, the scale of the snowpack could set up a strong season at one of the Southern Hemisphere's most historic ski resorts.
Lotte Arai receives 22 metres of annual snowfall - exceptional even by Japanese standards - but its corporate ownership model and limited terrain create an unusual cost-benefit equation. Here's what the numbers actually mean on the ground.
Banff Sunshine Village sits at 1,660m base and receives 9.27m of snow annually. Inside Banff National Park, it offers a six-month season and terrain split that skews heavily advanced - though the crowds and lift infrastructure tell their own story.
Magic Mountain is the only skier-owned co-operative in the Northeast, running on volunteer labour and refusing snowmaking entirely. It's an unusual model that produces equally unusual skiing.
Tignes has long been known for summer skiing on the Grande Motte Glacier, more than 3,450 metres up in the French Alps, but resort officials now say that may not last another decade. Altta chairman Clement Colin told AFP the glacier is losing 2 to 4 metres of thickness a year and could be almost completely melted within ten years. The resort's summer season has already shrunk to a single month, ticket sales are down, and Tignes is now planning for life after glacier skiing.
Cannon Mountain doesn't pretend to be something it isn't. Since 1938, this state-owned operation has offered steep fall-line skiing without the amenities or price tag of private resorts. For skiers who value terrain over convenience, that trade-off still makes sense.
The long-planned ski connection between Sillian in East Tyrol and Sexten in South Tyrol has hit another setback. An environmental review found the planned Austrian-side lift would cut through sensitive habitat, including breeding grounds for rock ptarmigan, so the Schultz Group has scrapped the single-lift plan for two separate lifts with a transfer at Leckfeldalm. New landowner agreements are needed and a fresh application isn't expected before 2027 - the South Tyrol side is unaffected.
The North Face Frontier, a Freeride World Tour Qualifier event, is returning to The Remarkables in Queenstown from 28 August to 3 September. The event pairs a two-star qualifier at Shadow Basin for newcomers with a four-star event on the Alta Chutes, one step below the professional level. Now in its 21st year, the competition has produced past FWT champions including New Zealanders Jess Hotter and Ben Richards, and comes as freeriding heads toward its Olympic debut at the 2030 Alps Games.
Big White Ski Resort in Kelowna, BC is midway through a $450,000 regrading project on Ridge Connector and Middle Perfection, two key runs linking the Ridge base back to the Bullet Chair. The goal is a smoother surface that opens earlier in the season and needs less snow to groom - Middle Perfection has often needed winch-assisted grooming because of its steep terrain. Crews are also flattening sections of Lower Serwas and clearing brush to improve snow retention.
San Martino di Castrozza - Passo Rolle is spending more than 16 million euros on its biggest modernisation yet. Two old 3-seater chairlifts on Alpe Tognola's Scandola-Conca section are being replaced by a single detachable 6-seater, cutting the ride to 4 minutes 27 seconds and dropping the number of lift towers from 33 to 10. The project also covers reworked slopes, an extended Conca run, a relocated snow park, 30 new snow cannons, and a new lift-station bar - most of it due to open in 2026.
At NZ$50 for an adult day ticket, Manganui undercuts every commercial ski area in New Zealand by a significant margin. The catch? This North Island club field operates on a volcano with precisely four lifts and a five-week season.
Sun Valley, Idaho has become the first ski resort in the United States to earn certification through DarkSky International's Approved Lodging & Resorts Program, recognising its outdoor lighting practices, environmental stewardship, and habitat protection. To mark the achievement, Sun Valley is running a Perseid Meteor Shower event on 12 August, with a 125 US dollar ticket covering a gondola ride up Bald Mountain, food and drinks, and guided astronomy programming.
Arber bills itself as the Bavarian Forest's premier ski destination, which sounds optimistic until you realise it's also the only proper resort in the region. At 406 vertical metres and 11.5km of trails, this is weekend skiing territory - but that doesn't mean it isn't worth considering.
Gitschberg Jochtal in South Tyrol is replacing its ageing 4-seater Gitsch chairlift with a new automatic 6-seater from Leitner, cutting the ride to the resort's highest point to 2 minutes 41 seconds - about half the current travel time. The new lift climbs from 2,203 to 2,500 metres with heated seats, weather hoods, and individual footrests, plus an AI boarding system that checks riders are seated safely before the bar comes down. It's due to open for the 2026/27 season.
Sapporo Kokusai trades scale for convenience - 18 metres of annual snowfall and genuine Hokkaido powder, all within an hour of Sapporo's city centre. For those with limited time or budget constraints, it's a reasonable compromise.
