What are the world’s top Alpine athletes doing in summer? For those whose passion and profession revolves around skiing and snow, summer is when most teams put in the hard work. While some have already left for the southern hemisphere to train in winter conditions, others are skiing on Europe’s glaciers.

The busiest glacier is currently Zermatt, with plenty of teams choosing the Swiss ski resort at over 3,700 metres above sea level as the location for their training camps. The Canadian men’s speed and ladies’ tech teams, the Swiss ladies’ speed team, the Italian men’s tech team, the Norwegian ladies’ team, the French men’s speed team, the Spanish and others have all be seen there “crashing gates” lately.

Closeby in Saas Fee were the Finnish men’s and ladies’ teams, while last season’s overall World Cup champion Tina Maze (SLO) and the Italian ladies’ tech team are training in Passo Stelvio (ITA).

In France the Les Deux Alpes glacier has been bustling with skiers. The French men’s tech and ladies’ speed teams are training there in addition to a few of the Italians.

Nevertheless, the high altitude and constant temperature changes makes training on a glacier all summer a really tiring experience. Therefore, most of the above mentioned teams are scheduled to pack up and move to Argentina, Chile or New Zealand in the upcoming weeks. At this time of the year resorts in the southern hemisphere offer full-on winter conditions and great training opportunities.

The United States ladies’ speed team is already training in El Colorado, Chile. Top athletes Julia Mancuso and Mikaela Shiffrin are based at the technical camp in New Zealand, but will head to Chile in September for the speed team’s second camp there. US superstar Lindsey Vonn, who is recovering well from her injury in February, has her sights set on returning to snow in September.