If there is anyone who is not happy about the onset of spring it is surely winter sports fans. The warmer weather and melting snow mean it is getting closer to that last run down the slopes.

The situation is the worst in the Rhodope Mountains. Iliyana Manolova from Pamporovo AD, which manages the ski facilities and two hotels in the resort, told The Sofia Echo that the weather was already too warm. “If no snow falls by the end of the week, we will have to end the season,” she said. The lifts, however, would continue functioning until early April. The last tourist groups were due to arrive in Pamporovo on March 22, but if there was no snow they would be re-directed to Borovets or Bansko, Manolova said. As the peak season for the resort ended on January 6, there was a 35 per cent discount on the prices of the ski facilities.

The nearby ski centre in Chepelare had been closed since mid-March because of the warm weather, Daniela Sivenova from the Chepelare tourist information centre said.

The season in Bansko would last until mid-April, according to the public relations office of Bansko City Hall. No particular date had been set for the official end of the season yet. However, hotels and shops in the resort had already started offering discounts. In mid-March, the resort was far from overcrowded and there were no discounts on lift passes. Show coverage at the highest ski runs however was 1.5m.

According to information available on the internet, most of Borovets’s ski runs were still open when The Sofia Echo went to press. The snow coverage was 1.8m on the highest ski runs. No one from Borosport AD, the company that manages the ski facilities in Borovets, was available to comment on whether any official end to the season had been decided.