The 2026-2027 ski season has begun in Chongli, the small Hebei city beside the 2022 Winter Olympic venues. Wanlong opened on the 23rd, and its chairman says it is testing snowmaking that works in warmer weather.
China News Service reported on the 23rd that Wanlong Ski Resort in Chongli, Hebei, opened that day, formally starting the 2026-2027 season. It was described as the first large outdoor mountain resort in north China to operate this season. A People’s Daily Online Hebei piece, titled roughly ‘Olympic small town welcomes the new season’ and carried by Huanqiu, follows the same line.
광고 문의 · 300×250Temperature decides the opening day
Wanlong chairman Luo Li said temperature limits are a long-standing problem shared by outdoor resorts in the north. Opening dates and season length depend heavily on natural temperatures, which makes it harder for visitors to plan and raises operating costs. Wanlong has replaced snowmaking equipment and is piloting high-temperature snowmaking.
Luo stressed that the effort is not a race to open first but a search for a way to stabilize the operating period, and said the experience could be useful to similar northern resorts. How well the technology works, and what it produces and costs, was not confirmed in the reports.
From scale to quality
Luo said the industry once competed on trail counts and visitor capacity, but as advanced skiers grow in number, visitors care more about snow stability, trail variety and terrain richness. This season Wanlong reworked several trails and added off-piste areas and distinctive terrain.
Chongli is a core cluster of China’s ski industry with several large resorts. Luo expects leading resorts’ early experiments to push the regional ice-and-snow sector from expansion toward higher-quality development. The reports gave no trail counts or visitor forecasts and did not say when other resorts will open.