TCR | April 19, 2026 — The Southern Hemisphere Is Calling

Published April 19, 2026

April 19, 2026

The Forecast

The Southern Hemisphere Is Calling

Sunday morning, and here's a thought experiment: stop mourning what's behind you and start looking at what's ahead. While most of the West reads zeros on the depth sensors and the last holdouts — A-Basin, Mammoth, Killington's Superstar — grind through their beautiful, stubborn spring rituals, the southern hemisphere is quietly waking up. New Zealand's ski season is just a few months out, and if this winter taught you anything, it should be that planning early beats scrambling late. Closer to home, Jay Peak is out there having one of its best spring weekends of the year with corn so good it belongs in a farmer's market, and Killington is doing what Killington does — moguls into May, no sympathy required. The Sierra picked up 29 centimeters this past week with another 15 in the forecast, which means Mammoth isn't done talking. The season didn't end. It migrated.

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Fresh Tracks

◆ Powder Magazine

Loschi and Stevenson Break Down Their NST Ski Wins

Powder catches up with Natural Selection Ski 2026 champs Manon Loschi and Colby Stevenson after their Spine Cell victory. The venue change, the pressure, the skiing — all of it dissected by the people who actually had to deal with it.

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◆ SnowBrains

When Is the Best Time to Ski New Zealand?

As the northern hemisphere winds down, SnowBrains runs the playbook on Aotearoa's ski season — timing, terrain, and the particular magic of chasing winter in July. Your summer plane ticket just got more interesting.

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◆ Powder Magazine

Idaho's First Ski Lift Was Literally a Boat

Kelly Canyon's origin story involves a repurposed boat hauling skiers uphill, which is the kind of scrappy local history that makes you love small mountains more than any mega-resort marketing campaign ever could.

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★ Teton Gravity Research

TGR Down Day: Trading Pow for Crab in BC

Teal Harle and the TGR crew hit a flat spell in British Columbia and did the only reasonable thing — went crabbing. No turns, no problem. Sometimes the best days on a film trip are the ones without skiing.

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The Edit

Matchstick Productions re-upped their Nootka Sound segment — a film about a place where you can ski steep coastal lines in the morning and paddle out to surf in the afternoon, all in the same remote corner of British Columbia's west coast. Three years on and it still hits because the premise is absurd and the execution is gorgeous: deep Pacific Northwest snowpack meeting cold-water surf breaks with no one around. It's the kind of dual-sport dream that most people file under 'impossible' and a few stubborn filmmakers actually went and proved real.

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@Matchstick Productions

Off-Piste

🔹 The Forest Service is moving to Utah. The USFS headquarters relocation and restructuring under the current administration is one of the biggest public lands stories of the year — and it directly affects every national forest you've ever skied, hiked, or camped in. Outside has the breakdown.

🔹 Jay Peak is adding high-speed lifts. In a recent podcast, Jay Peak president Steve Wright confirmed the resort will be putting a down payment on new high-speed detachable lifts — part of the ongoing revival that's turned Jay into one of the most compelling stories in eastern skiing. Lift Blog has the roundup.

🔹 50,000 people showed up for an EDM festival on a glacier in Sölden. Electric Mountain Festival ran April 13–18 and turned the Austrian ski area into a six-day rave. Whether this is brilliant resort diversification or a sign of the apocalypse remains an open question. InTheSnow.

🔹 Sea Otter Classic, Day 2. Blister's on the ground at the massive cycling festival with more gear and bike industry scouting. If you ride in the off-season — and you should — their coverage is worth a scroll.

Dropping

Elan ACE Collection — Complete Redesign for '26-27. Elan just gutted and rebuilt their ACE lineup around a new "Active Suspension Drive" platform that moves beyond the asymmetric construction they've been known for. It's a full philosophy change — new shape logic, new dampening system, new ride character. Early details from STEEP Magazine suggest this is Elan trying to reset the conversation about what a performance frontside ski can be. If you're speccing out next season's quiver, this is worth tracking.

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Conditions Check

Pacific Northwest closed

Zero base depth across Baker, Crystal, and Whistler with temps climbing to 12°C (54°F) and no snow in the forecast — the lifts are done but the volcanoes will hold lines for tourers a while longer. →

Rockies mixed

Colorado and Utah sensors show minimal base with 7cm in the past week and nothing incoming, but A-Basin is still spinning and Mammoth picked up 29cm this week with another 15cm in the Sierra forecast — pockets of life if you know where to look. →

Northern Rockies / Interior BC thin

Jackson and Big Sky showing 20cm over the past week but just 1–2cm base depth and temps rising to 6°C (43°F) with no new snow expected — the resort season is done but backcountry north aspects may still hold. →

Northeast spring

Jay Peak is serving some of the best spring corn of the year this weekend and Killington's Superstar is grinding moguls into May as always — 13cm fell in the last 24 hours with temps from -6°C to 7°C providing a solid freeze-thaw cycle. →

Europe thin

The Alps are reading 1cm base across France, Switzerland, and Austria with zero new snow and no precipitation in the forecast — glacier skiing at Zermatt and a handful of high-altitude holds are all that's left. →

Japan closed

Zero snow on the ground across both Hokkaido and Honshu with temps at 5–18°C (40–65°F) and no snow in the forecast — the Land of the Rising Sun has officially risen past ski season. →

The best skiers you know are already looking at maps of the southern hemisphere. See you tomorrow.

The Conditions Report

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