J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by admin

A depressing run of sad stories from the slopes of Europe and North America over the Christmas period has seen at least half a dozen people die in accidents. At least half of those killed were wearing helmets.

In the most horrific accident, at a small ski hill on Wyoming, Hogadon, a 23 year old boarder crashed in to a mother and her five year old daughter at high speed on an icy black run. Both the snowboarder and the little girl, who was wearing a helmet, are dead.

The deaths of those wearing helmets may raise questions for those who argue that helmet wearing should be obligatory and a rare bit of research has been published by the NSAA (The National Ski Areas Association of the USA) which has found that while helmet wearing can be shown to have dramatically reduced injuries over the past decade, the number of deaths on the slopes on average in the US has held steady at around 40 per year, despite the increase in number of people wearing helmets.

Essentially the research found that while helmets did reduce the risk of injury in minor accidents, they were largely ineffective in the kind of accident most likely to cause a fatality, such as hitting a tree or rock at high speed.

The study found that injury rates from traditional injuries (such as twisted knees) has dropped dramatically due to improvements in bindings, shorter skis and helmet wearing.

Three-quarters of deaths were among males in their late teens or latter 40s who were of intermediate ability or above and traveling at high speed.

On the upside, skiing and boarding was found to have one of the lowest death rates of any sport, the 40 average death rate in the US compared to 900 deaths in the country from cycling and was about the same as playing tennis with chance of fatality less than one in a million.

Courtesy of and © Snow24 plc

No direct knowledge of them but a number of online businesses work with Intersport in the same way.

Have you contacted alpinresorts directly? There's plenty of contact information on this page, including phone and email.

Wishing all J2Skiers everywhere an extremely snowy, successful and happy 2011!

Ski well, stay safe and have fun! 8)

Steve, we (J2Ski) work directly with SkiSet, have access to the complete network of hire shops and can offer you the same discounts - if not better.

http://www.skiset.co.uk/j2ski/

As SkiSet's top UK partner, we can also assure you of the best service possible (no, you won't get given crap ones). HTH.

More options for Snow Forecasts by email :-

Snow Reports for La Mongie, France

...and even Ruka, Finland (that looks cold!)

We've recently added several hundred more ski resorts to our snow forecast coverage and many are not on the options list for snow mails (there are just too many!).

If there's a resort you want emails for, and we have a forecast on the site, then post your request here and we'll make it so! 8)

Our final weekly snow mail of 2010 is a relatively quiet one (for Europe at least).

This past week the most notable snow action in the Northern Hemisphere was to the East Coast of the United States which saw widely reported snow storms bring over 1 metre (four feet) of snow to New England resorts.

In Europe there were some significant falls of snow last weekend, particularly in the Northern and Western Alps, although temperatures have eased and the weather cleared since.

European Weather and Snow This Coming Weekend

It looks like a fairly uneventful forecast for the next few days. The main feature, across Europe, will be temperatures falling to well below their seasonal averages as we enter the New Year. Precipitation is unlikely to be significant until later next week... after which the forecast models are hinting at another episode of snow, but more on that next week.

Could be worth watching the forecasts for next weekend... :wink:

Snowing in the French Alps and has been for 24 hours - what's your view like?

Very Merry Christmas One and All!

And a Joyeux Noël from a very snowy Samoens!

Admin loves you all (mostly)!