Perisher forced into early closure for 2024 Season

After a challenging ski season, Perisher - Australia's largest Ski Resort - has announced that with more warm temperatures and rain predicted, today will be the last day of operations at Perisher for the 2024 season.   

Perisher released a statement noting “We have made this difficult decision based on current and forecasted conditions and in the interest of guest and staff safety, as well as with the best interests of our environment in mind.   

“We’d like to thank you for helping us make the most of this season and hope to see you back at Perisher in 2025.  

Perisher’s scheduled closing date was 29th  September.

This comes after Perisher closed two major areas of terrain on 1st September due to warmer temperatures melting the snow. The early closure of Guthega and Smiggin Holes meant the available terrain for spring skiing was reduced.

Thredbo, another large Australian resort, is already closed, alongside numerous other ski areas in the country. Some, like Mt. Baw Baw, haven’t spun their lifts since early September.

The latter half of the Australian ski season has proven difficult. This past August was the country’s hottest on record, and the winter was the second hottest on record, behind 2023. Late last month, Perisher reduced its operating footprint due to warm temperatures, rain, and wind. Spencers Creek, a snow depth measuring site in Australia monitored by SnowyHyrdo, reports dramatically lower snow depth totals than in September 2022. Australian resorts have faced unseasonable conditions for the second winter in a row.

Warming global temperatures could threaten the viability of winter sports in Australia in the long term.

Research published in March 2024 from Germany's University of Bayreuth in the journal PLOS One, highlights the future for the Australian Alps is threatened by a predicted 78% reduction in snow coverage by the end of the century.

The report - the first to combine open-source information on global geo-locations of ski areas with openly available global snow cover day projections – predicts that worldwide, 13% of ski areas will lose all natural snow cover by 2071–2100 and 20% will decrease between 50 and 100%.

The study puts Australia's rate of decline as the highest when compared to six other major skiing regions in the world, including New Zealand, Europe and Japan.

The report has been published at a time when climate change is currently impacting snow reliability in ski areas all over the world with growing concern among professional and amateur skiers and the skiing industry about how skiable the future will be.

Images: Perisher as of June last year (top) and as of this week (below).