J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by J2SkiNews

The Combined British Services (Army, Navy and Air Forces) are increasingly seeing competitive snowsports as a way of providing a new challenge for serious injured servicemen and women.

The Combined Services (Army, Navy and Air Force's) Disabled Ski Team (CSDST) is a charity which trains wounded, injured or sick personnel to be Paralympic-standard skiers, reintroducing the spirit of challenge and competition that they were accustomed to as part of normal service life.

The team has been bolstered by the success of Army Sergeant (retired) Mick Brennan who competed for Team GB at the 2014 Sochi Paralympics and now wants to increase its efforts in the four year run up to the Pyeongchang 2018 Paralympic Games and wants to take two more team members to those Games in three and a half years' time.

This can't happen without the team's extensive ski-training programme which is part of the charity's specially developed path towards sporting success, and the team are now aiming to raise £20,000 to reach their funding goal for Pyeongchang 2018.

UK employees of Selex ES, a company which works closely with British forces to provide protective equipment, so the CSDST cause is close to their hearts, have organised a fundraising event to start the battle to reach that funding target.

The 'Ride of Thrones' - will see a team cycle from one historic throne of power to another. Participants will leave Edinburgh Castle on September 3rd and make their way across the UK to arrive at the Tower of London on September 9th. The team will comprise Selex ES employees, other CSDST supporters, staff and athletes from the charity itself using specially designed hand-bikes.

Anyone can sponsor the riders and donate to The Combined Services Disabled Ski Team via a page on the JustGiving website: http://www.justgiving.com/RideofThrones or by texting "HERO26" followed by the amount you wish to make (max £10) to 70070.

A Utah judge has not yet made a decision on a legal challenge against one of the three ski areas in North America to still ban snowboarding.

The US district judge who heard the complaint from a group of boarders challenging the legality of the ban at Alta ski area did not say whether he thought a full case should be heard, or whether the claim should be thrown out by the courts. It seems unclear when or if a decision will be announced by the judge.

The group of boarders argue that the ban illegally discriminates against them, infringes their constitutional rights, and is based on prejudices and stereotypes. They also question Alta's right to ban people practicing their sport on what is public land leased to the resort.

Alta argue that in their opinion banning boarders makes the slopes safer for skiers, claiming boarders have a 'blind spot' and that the terms of its land use permit allow it to restrict some sliding devices' at its whim. The US Forest Service which controls the federal land supports Alta's position.

Two other US resorts, including another in Utah, Deer Valley, as well as Mad River Glen in Vermont, still ban boarders, although both are on private land. Resorts which did ban boarders later than most, until the late 1990s or more recently, include aspen, Taos and Park City Mountain resort, the latter staged snowboarding events at the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Olympics a few years after lifting its ban.

Austria's Ischgl ski area continues to cement its current position as one of the world's top resorts for infrastructure investment and innovation with the news that yet another spectacular new lift is currently under construction there, with the aim of completion during the coming season.

The new Pardatschgratbahn lift will be a funitel-style running on three cables and will in fact set a world record for the biggest vertical ascent yet of any tricable cable car with 1,251m.

The lift replaces a 25 year old lift with small four seater gondola cabins and which is divided in to two sections with a middle station but which is no longer able to sufficiently serve as a means of transportation to the Ischgl/Idalp ski resort. The new lift will be able to carry up to 28 people in each of its 31 giant cabins.

The bottom section of the existing Pardatschgratbahn cable car will now be demolished to make way for the new wind-stable tricable gondola lift which will lift skiers and boarders from the eastern centre of the resort to the Pardatschgrat directly, with no middle station anymore.

The new top station of the lift (pictured above) will be attached to the existing top station structure to create a larger building. To avoid the danger of any subsidence, the station will be constructed on several individual foundations which can be adjusted using hydraulic heavy duty compressors as required.

The special geological setting also means that the entire mountain station needs to be anchored back around 140m using cables. The lift will also provide disabled access to the Pardorama restaurant.

Back down in Ischgl resort the construction of the valley station presents a particular challenge due to the tight space constraints. The station will be divided in to two parts linked by a bridge and with the different levels in each part connected by escalators and lifts.

This is in order to incorporate facilities including a large ski store on the lowest level, with a sports shop and ski hire facility above and queuing area and ticket counter on the ground floor level. The top floor of the will provide access to the cable car.

LED lighting will be used to transform the valley station into an attraction even when it is dark outside.

The lift's transportation capacity will be 2,800 people per hour with a speed of 7.5 metres per second and a travel time of approximately 9.4 minutes.

Crystal have launched a guidebook to promote their new 2014-15 ski holiday range, rather than the traditional brochure.

'Your Guide to the Mountain' runs to 236 pages and features the company's 135 destinations worldwide, the largest available in the UK.

Of course the guidebook lists Crystal's accommodation and flight options, as well as recommendations for different booking types (groups, beginners, families…) and rentals, lift pass and other options, but it is been presented as a guidebook with glossy images, easy to read maps and insider tips from Crystal's global ski resort staff network, as well as all the other basic resort information.

Crystal has been trading for 33 seasons and has been selling 2014-15 ski holidays since last December, but the launch of 'Your Guide to the Mountain' marks the start of the 'main' sales period, other operators are also launching their main brochures around now if they have not done so already.

This winter Crystal has five new resorts including La Massana on the VallNord pass with nearby Arinsal in Andorra, Maria Alm on the Hochkönig pass with 125km of piste and fellow Austrian area Nauders close to the Italian and Swiss borders with the chance to ski in the three different countries. There's also Salla in Finland and Kronplatz in the Italian Dolomites.

There are also seven new flight routes, from Bristol to Innsbruck for Austrian resorts; Edinburgh to Toulouse for Andorra; Gatwick to Plovdiv for Bulgaria; Manchester to Kuusamo for Finland; Southampton to Chambery for France; Bournemouth and Cardiff to Geneva for France and Switzerland.

British Ski and Snowboard, the governing body of elite snowsports in the UK, have a conundrum.

Virtually all of the British Team's success in recent years has been in the so called 'Park and Pipe' disciplines, and thus under 'reward and invest for success' criteria for sports funding, all the money recently announced to fund elite snowsports athletes in the UK is allocated to Park and Pipe.

Historically however British Ski and Snowboard has been, and continues to be, dominated by representatives of the traditional Alpine disciplines – downhill and slalom – a proportion of whom are unhappy about this situation and they may have the voting power to undermine the funding allocation to Park & Pipe, and threaten the funding or all snowsports from UK Sport, if they so decide.

So, in order to try to balance things out, the British Ski and Snowboard Park and Pipe Squad have come together to encourage people to "get involved" and join BSS to help Park and Pipe get better representation in the organisation.

That means anyone who is already in some way involved in freestyle or freeski should consider joining British Ski and Snowboard via: https://memberdesq.imgstg.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=main&OrgID=8260 …and anyone who isn't now but was once, or who would like to become involved, should do so now, …then join.

"The GB Park and Pipe Team have a strong foundation and we are keen to build on the recent successes in Sochi, maintaining the progression and to be able to challenge for multi medals in Snowsports in the upcoming years," said Lesley McKenna of British Ski and Snowboard, who added,

"We need as many people with an interest in Freeski and Freestyle Snowboard, no matter how small or how seemingly outdated, to come and get involved whether as an organiser, supporter of the local scene, coach, filmer, or other role, we would love to have you engage with our growing community, and we need those already involved to become members of BSS to give us a voice within the organisation."

The Park and Pipe Squad have come put together a short video encouraging membership – see link: http://ripperz.co.uk/wp-content/themes/auctionpress/thumbs/Ripperz-BSS-Interactive-Flyer.pdf

Small detail on the minimum pay issue but I was talking to Inghams last week and they pointed out they had kept on one 'chalet hotel' in Verbier "while negotiations with the Swiss continue" so it may not be all over. They also pointed out that that one 'chalet hotel' gave them more Swiss beds than most of the other smaller chalet operators still continuing. They further pointed out that those operators were typically charging double now for the week in Switzerland to a 'comparable week' in another ski nation. And they finally said they did not think it was right that they should pay their staff operating in one country double/triple what they pay them in another country, to do the same job. These points are all just grist to the mill and don't contradict any comments above.

A new report has concluded that more skiers are arriving in Colorado looking to buy marijuana on their ski holiday than was expected when the state voted to legalise limited recreational drug taking last year.

Among the findings of the study, which was commissioned by Colorado state marijuana regulators and conducted by the Marijuana Policy Group, which is run in conjunction with by the University of Colorado, is that tourists rather than Colorado residents are buying up to 90% of drugs sold in ski towns. Tourism businesses have also sprung up which collect skiers from their flights in to Denver airport then deliver them to the new drug shops before taking them to their ski accommodation.

The legalising of marijuana sales, which began on January 1st, caused a number of issues for the states ski industry. All areas were keen to stress that skiing or boarding while intoxicated by drugs or alcohol was strictly prohibited. Some also pointed out that their slopes are on US National Forest land – federal land which is subject to federal laws, which continue to say marijuana use on them is illegal.

Before the law came in to force some ski resort towns voted to block the establishment of shops selling drugs.

There was also consternation when the idea was put forward that drug strength should be graded with a similar colour coding top ski run steepness.

Colorado has collected more than $35 million in marijuana taxes and fees this year.

Tourists tend to pay the full retail price for the drugs whereas many Colorado residents have cards which allow them to purchase the drugs at reduced rates, normally due to a medical condition.

A new report on the cost of lift tickets in ski resorts around the world for children has been published by the International Ski Federation (FIS).

The report, written by J2Ski's news editor Patrick Thorne, looks at the high season lift ticket prices for children in 700 ski areas in 50 countries worldwide.

For the leading countries, the report collected child lift ticket prices and looked at the different discount age ranges from free passes for younger children (which in some cases were found to extend right up to age 12 or older), discount passes for younger children, teen or youth rates for older children, and then the age at which resorts asked children to pay adult prices if still under 18.

Average age bands for each level of discount from all resorts surveyed in that country were calculated, along with average child prices year by year.

Prices quoted are based on high season, non-discounted tickets from last winter. The report also lists initiatives offered by resorts in each country to reduce prices for children.

It is available to download free of charge here:

http://www.fis-ski.com/news-multimedia/news/article=international-report-children-lift-ticket-prices-here.html