By Fiona Flores Watson

Dates: season lasted 146 days, from 26 November 2016 to 23 April 2017

Total skiers: 955,521
Total other activities: 76,618
Total non-skiers: 118,822

Final visitor total: 1,150,961 (up 17% on 2015/16)

Busiest month: April - 237,649 skiers

Average runs open every day: 80km

Visitors: 87% Spanish, 13% non-Spanish (majority British)

The 2014/2015 ski season started on 29 November 2014, and finished on 3 May 2015, with the best winter season for five years.

The season lasted 156 days (the longest in southern Europe), with four total days of complete closure and two days of partial closure due to poor weather conditions - the second-longest season in history.

News 2016 / 2017 season

The season opened on 28 November 2015.

Sierra Nevada has more than 50 races scheduled for this season, including a World Cup event - the Freestyle Aerials - in February 2016 (see below for more details). This event will be hosted for the first time ever in Sierra Nevada, specifically in Pradollano, along with music and entertainment aimed at a young audience. This will be the last trial before the Snowboard and Freestyle World Championships, scheduled for March 2017.

News 2016 / 2017 season

Sierra Nevada has a fantastic new website, which features a mini snow report, offering real-time information on the area: air temperature and weather, amount of runs and lifts open, snow conditions including depth, and length of pistes in km; in addition there are individual temperatures for each of the areas currently open, plus predictions for the following days, in terms of weather and which runs and lifts will be open.

Unfortunately the 2006/2007 ski season was rather dissappointing due to the drought that was affecting southern Spain at the time. When the slopes were finally open for skiing on December 2, the area available for skiiers measured only 2 kilometres in total length. Compare that with the previous year which opened with 11 kilometres in ski runs.

We have great news this 2007/2008 ski season on the Sierra Nevada slopes!

The company that runs the ski station, Cetursa, has invested a whopping 17.35 million euros to improve the facilities at Sierra Nevada this year. Most of the money was allocated to build a new cablecare for the Borreguiles area, and that will be able to handle 3,200 passengers per hour. With this new cablecare up and running it only takes seven minutes to travel between the main ski resort at Pradollano to Borreguiles. That nifty project cost more than 15 million euros.

Last year we reported on the tremendous investments taking place in Sierra Nevada to renovate the ski stations, the lifts, the parking areas and even the hospitality business. This year the positive changes will be felt as work has finished on many important projects.

The 2008/2009 Ski season was one of the best in history with more than 1 million skiers enjoying the slopes. The previous year barely reached 750,000 skiers, but thanks to amazing snow conditions from the start to finish of this past season, Andalucia's premium ski facilities closed on a very good note this time around.

A bigger and better snowpark: the renamed Superpark Sulayr de Montebajo has moved from its previous location in Borreguiles, to a new, larger site in Loma de Dilar. The new superpark occupies a more extensive area, offering a greater variety of more challenging obstacles, including jumps, boxes, rails and half-pipes. Because of the larger area of terrain, these new features are more spaced out, giving snowboarders and freestyle skiers plenty of room to practise their favourite tricks.

The main event for this season is the Junior Snowboard World Championship, which takes place on 23-31 March 2012. For more, see our Events page.