While the peak of the ski season has passed in Croatia, skiing this winter, however, is not over. Tens of thousands of Croatian skiers will still hit the slopes through the end of winter, and while many Croats may take weekend or day trips to closer Slovenian, Austrian, Italian and Bosnian ski resorts, many will choose to ski the local slopes during the coming weeks.
While the ski season at Sljeme has already been in full swing, next weekend Platak ski resort will operate at full capacity, and a ski slope will open at Čelimbaša located in Mrkopalj, reports Lokalni.hr on January 20, 2017.
“Maybe tomorrow, and no later than Sunday, we will open the tourist ski slope, which is about a thousand meters long,” reveals ski director of Čelimbaša - Ivan Butković. “Most of the skiers we expect are traditionally from Primorje, Istria and Zagreb, but many come to us from Dalmatia as well. We do not have artificial snow, but with natural snowfall we have about half a meter. Otherwise, when winter is ideal for skiing, in the season we should sell about 3000 ski passes,” added Butković.
Platak is also thriving. While there is over a meter of snow on parts of Plakat, the slopes boast between 30 and 40 centimeters of snow. This ski resort near Rijeka boasts 6000 meters of the ski slopes, and a ski season that lasts 70 days with around 15,000 skiers.
Sljeme has already seen around 10,000 skiers, and if the weather participates, an estimated 20,000 and 30,000 ski tickets are still expected to sell.
“Sljeme has about 4000 meters of ski slopes, and there is currently around 80 centimeters of snow, of which 20-30 centimeters are natural. All ski runs and lifts are working, and the weekends at Sljeme bring in about a thousand people per day,” says Igor Žiljak from Sljeme.
Skiing in Zagreb, of course, brings mostly locals, but the weekends bring in guests from all over Croatia.
“While skiing at Sljeme is about 90% locals, there are foreigners. For example, Sljeme brings in a lot of Slovenes and foreigners living in Zagreb, and at the time of Advent, there were a lot of tourists. Some tourists come to Zagreb for Advent for five days or a week, and they’ll spend a weekend with us at Sljeme,” adds Žiljak.
While the local ski areas throughout Croatia cannot compete with many of the European ones, nor can they offer the same length of the ski season, they certainly have their own attributes.
“The ski infrastructure of our ski-centers unfortunately can not be measured even with the smaller ski resorts, for example, in Slovenia, but it great to have the option of skiing only twenty minutes away. The best time to ski is during the night, when people arrive after work, and there are no crowds,” concludes a Zagreb skier who regularly skis in the larger foreign ski resorts, but also on Sljeme.
