… Well, at least in some places. About a week ago I posted a review of the Ramundberget Ski Resort in Sweden. In the article I pointed out how snow secure the place is. Well, when I was there last April, the snow was fine and there was plenty of it but the locals also told me that it has been one of the dryest and warmest April for ages…So, I could call this my typical luck.

Ville Eskonen, our man from the north also reported that they already got some snow up there. Check out Ville’s usual “model”, his brother Veikko, on some classic early season action in Ounasvaara, Rovaniemi, Finland. Despite getting a few wet flakes already here (some 800 kilometres more south), we are still a bit jealous.

Some Finns (and friend of ours) started their season already in September with a road trip to Lyngen, Norway. This link is in Finnish but check out the great pictures from the excellent Vapaalasku.com site.

In the European Alps several glacier resorts are open and if you get lucky you might be able to score a few powder turns here and there, here’s a photo from two days ago snapped by friends of HomeboySki.com at Pitztal, Austria:

Skier: Lea Hartl, photo: Lorenzo Rieg

Expect some more pics from Austria in the end of this week as a snow storm has hit parts of the country, dumping over meter of fluffy snow on mountains at some places.

The first Scandinavian resort to open for skiing was Ruka in Northern Finland on 13th of October with one lift spinning for skiers, Check out the night pic below of one of the two open slopes at Ruka. Over on the other side of the pond in US the first resorts that have opened for skiing are Arapahoe Basin and Loveland in Colorado. At all of these places expect spotty coverage and icy slope conditions or man-made snow. But hey, it’s still better than nothing and sign of the coming winter.

The following video is from the same area, 7th of October 2009! Flat angle yes but it is still POWDER in October! (And I guess the steeper glades are not yet covered enough to serve any skiing at all).

Think snow!