Ski resorts exaggerating piste lengths

Christoph Schrahe, a German cartographer has measured the length of the pistes along the fall line down the middle of the pistes in 80 ski resorts and found that in many cases they are considerably shorter than the lengths given on the piste maps.

When asked to comment Reinhard Klier the CEO of the Stubaier Gletscher ski area said that they gave the length of the pistes not as the length along the fall line, but as the length of a line that arcs from one edge of the piste to the other, which they calculated by multiplying the fall line length by Pi/2 (1.7) in order to simulate the actual route taken by a skier. He also said that they measured pistes wider than 100m twice!

The table below was assembled from Austrian, German and Swiss press reports. It would appear that each ski area has its own system of measurement.



Ski areas that do not follow this practice and give the length of their pistes as the fall line length include: St Anton, Lech and Zurs, Kitzbühel, Saalbach-Hinterglem, Espace Diamant, Sierra Nevada and Parnassos in Greece.

Mmm, interesting. I was aware that some skullduggery went on regarding ski-domaine measurements and that Monte Rosa was one of the worst offenders. Didn't realise it was quite so widespread though.

Fascinating !!
A bit of a discrepancy, a bit of exaggeration - OK
But some of these seem fraudulent.

It doesn't surprise me, you just look at some piste maps and the total piste length looks wrong.

For me i ski the piste and all in between and the rest!! so maybe would the american resort sizing of acres or hectares be better... but i suppose there are always the people that dont venture off piste..maybe the ski resort marketeers are all frustrated politicians...cant give a straight answer;-)

Right. Monterosa. For starters the stated length is not 180km.
So this is all rubbish anyway,

The Monterosa lift company website http://www.monterosa-ski.com/it/sciare/sciare.html states that the total length of the pistes in the Monterosa ski area is 180 km.

No one in the skiing industry has seriously disputed these figures. In response to their publication Franz Hörl the chairman of the Austrian cableway operators association and member of the Austrian parliament has called for the establishment of a European piste measurement standard, as the problem affects the whole of central Europe.

They might be if you zig zagged down each run