No show snow sends a chill through ski-resort businesses

Thredbo July 2026. Pictures supplied

It may have been the worst start to the ski season for decades but hope of more snow this coming weekend has lifted spirits in businesses in the resorts that Canberrans go to.

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“June was rubbish,” Aaron Lambert who owns Base Ski Hire in Jindabyne said.

“But it looks good for the weekend,” he added. “If the lifts aren’t going, we are closed. The next snowfall will make everything open up.”

There was a blizzard at the end of last week, turning mountains around the Perisher and Thredbo resorts from a dull green and grey to white.

But Mr Lambert said the fall was too late to get the last-minute day-trippers heading to the slopes. This weekend should be different, he felt. “You’ve got to live in hope in this business.”

Hope was the word in the big resorts, too.

“Last week brought really great coverage across the mountain,” a spokesperson for Thredbo Resort said. They were keeping their fingers crossed that more snow this weekend would bring more skiers. A slow start was not good but not uncommon, was the view there.

The resorts need not only more snow but seriously low temperatures so that their artificial snow sticks.

On that score, there’s been some improvement: “We’ve had another big night of snowmaking here at Perisher, with temperatures dropping below minus 7 degrees overnight and 225 snow guns firing,” Dani Wright, a manager at Vail Resorts which includes Perisher, said.

“We’re also excited to see natural snowfall in the forecast this weekend – WeatherZone is predicting up to 25 centimetres over the weekend, with more to come next week. Our teams are working hard to open more terrain when it’s safe to do so.”

But there’s no doubt the start was bad.

“The Australian ski season has experienced one of its worst starts in decades with almost no snow on the ground at the main resorts of Thredbo and Perisher,” the PlanetSki website reported.

The westernmost part of Perisher on Thursday. Picture: supplied

At Spencers Creek near the Perisher Valley in the Kosciuszko National Park, for example, there was a depth of 35 centimetres earlier in the week compared with twice that depth at the same time last year. From June 16 to June 24, there was zero snow this year compared with 50 centimetres in the same period in 2025.

There have been little or no snow Junes in the past – in 2015 and 1967 – but meteorologists cite 1957 as the previous unambiguously worst year, when snow didn’t build up until well into July.

But it’s an ill wind that doesn’t blow someone some good. What has been poor for skiers this year has been good for walkers, according to the owners of Corroboree Lodge in the Perisher Valley.

The lack of snow had pushed “a lot of people to other activities like hiking,” Dominique Tait from the family firm said.

“We can’t control Mother Nature,” she said, conceding that it had been a “slow start”. But she thought business was now picking up.

And the Corin Forest ski facility 50 kilometres south of Canberra may have benefitted from the relatively balmy weather further south in the Snowy Mountains.

It’s got a ski slope about the length of a football field covered in artificially-created snow so it doesn’t rely so much on what falls from the sky. “We have invested heavily in all-weather snow-making technology,” a spokesperson said.

The facility has “snow factories” which create a base of snow and then, if temperatures are low enough, they top that up with frozen water pumped out by snow guns.

That meant they were able to open in April. “Corin Forest usually receives natural snow about six times per winter. For most of the winter we rely on our snow guns to give us our snow cover.

“To make snow we wait until the temperatures are below freezing and spray water mixed with air under high pressure and it falls to the ground as snow.”

They were pleased that the last few nights had been cold enough for the created snow to stick.