J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by admin

:D :D :D :D

Yep, summer is soooo last month. This is September baby! This is the ski pre-season... bring it on! :lol:

A report on the Telegraph website highlights the risk of not preparing for your ski holiday...

Research by Innsbruck University, studying 1500 patients admitted to hospital with heart symptoms during the past five ski seasons, has uncovered the following thought-provoking statistics :-

Dr Bernhard Metzler, associate professor of cardiology at the university, said: "Every year millions of tourists visit the Tyrolean Alps to participate in a variety of winter sports, each of which carries a certain risk of accident and injury.

"Sudden cardiac death accounts for a staggering 40 per cent of the total fatalities amongst winter sports tourists in the Austrian Alps and of these acute myocardial infarction (heart attack) is the leading cause."

In conclusion...

The authors recommended that people planning a ski trip should prepare carefully and gradually increase their regular physical activity. Once on holiday the time spent skiing should also be increased gradually, they said.

So get on yer bikes! :shock:

Central Swiss ski area Engelberg has announced lots of ski are enhancements this winter, including a wide range of alternative snow sports centres as well as better facilities for families and first timers.

The new Sliding Park on Mount Titlis will be located beneath the sun terrace of Hotel Trübsee and will feature a tubing park, and toboggan run where you can rent a 'Zipfel' Bob sledge or Snake-Gliss (articulated sledge). A 120m long magic carpet lift has also been installed to get users back up the slopes.

Also new will be the snowXpark on Lake Trübsee where you can ride a snowXbike over the designated trail. The new snowXbike It's like a go-cart, but a lot more exhilarating on the snow and ice with a panoramic backdrop.

In addition Engelberg's Rope Park will be open through the winter . The park has four routes, each one of a different level of difficulty. It incorporates cross over challenging balancing bridges, Nepalese footbridges and action-packed "flying fox" zip lines.

Courtesy of and © Snow24 plc

Plans to save the UK's original big downhill ski centre at Hillend, the Midlothian Snowsports Centre above Edinburgh in Scotland, are taking shape.

Hillend was the training centre where most of Britain's most successful downhill racers trained over the past three decades and more and has one of the world's longest artificial slope surfaces, but earlier this year it was announced the centre, which is publically owned, was under threat with operational losses of about £500,000 per year.

More than 27,000 people subsequently joined a Facebook campaign to save the ski slope and a special meeting of Midlothian Council, which owns the facility, was told it may be able to obtain £600,000 of investment from SportScotland.

The meeting was told that the investment, coupled with efficiency savings that had already been made, should see the centre break even within two years. However some councillors questioned the investment the council may still need to make in the centre to bridge the shortfall at a time when it is being asked to make multi-million pound savings and have requested more funding from the Scottish Government for the country's 'national snow sports centre.'
Courtesy of and © Snow24 plc

Australia's leading ski areas are currently being dumped on and are reporting the best August snowfalls for more than two decades. Much of the snow has been falling in the past week.

"Yesterday we smashed the record books with some of the best snow the mountain has seen in years! The resort received 34cms of snow, rendering it as the best August snowfall recorded since 1985!" said an excited spokesperson for Mt Buller.

It's a similar story at the country's largest resort, Perisher, which thinks this August could still end up their snowiest ever as the snow is still falling. There has been no other August since 1984 where more snow has fallen.

Perisher has had more than 30cm of fresh snow settle across the resort since yesterday, that makes it 2.6m of accumulated snowfalls since 1st August with wind-drifts over 1.5m deep in places.

For Mt Hotham it's 102cm in the past week with 47cm of fresh snow overnight on Wednesday - the biggest single dump on record since 2003. 82cm has fallen in the past 48 hours making it the resort's snowiest August since 1992. All 13 lifts are operating with plenty of powder stashes to be found.
Courtesy of and © Snow24 plc

With the summer ski season ending in France, there are now a few weeks when the country will have no ski slopes open before Tignes re-opens in mid-September. It then operates more-or-less alone for nearly 10 weeks until all the other French ski areas begin to open in late November and early December.

However a second glacier resort, Les 2 Alpes, does traditionally open it's slopes for one big party weekend each October, and this year the resort has announced that 23rd and 24th October are the dates in question.

After using the same format for over a decade until a few years ago, the resort has been experimenting with new ideas in recent years, but The Rock On Snowboard Tour will be back for its second edition.

The event is a National Test snowboard tour in France, bringing together snowboarding brands and snowboarders. During the two days, everyone can test the latest equipment on the resort's large glacier ski area. To compliment the tests, competitions are organized for the general public and children. On the ski side there's a new event this year, 'Come to Ski' which will have the same format of free gear testing.
Courtesy of and © Snow24 plc

Over 300 of the world's elite junior snow sports athletes from some 30 nations are in Lake Wanaka, New Zealand, this week to compete in the inaugural joint FIS Snowboard & Freestyle Junior World Championships which began last Thursday 19th August and continue to Tuesday the 31st.

Marking the first time a FIS World Championship has taken place in New Zealand and the first time the disciplines of Freestyle Skiing and Snowboarding have combined at FIS World Championship level, the event has attracted a high calibre field.

A Parade of Nations through Wanaka town centre launch the Championships on Friday followed by a traditional powhiri and official welcome by FIS Council Member Dean Gosper, as well as Championships Patron Juliane Bray, member of the FIS Athletes' Commission.

All the on-snow action takes place from 21st to 31st August at Cardrona Alpine Resort and Snow Park NZ, Lake Wanaka featuring nine events - snowboard slopestyle, snowboard cross, snowboard half-pipe, snowboard parallel slalom and giant slalom, snowboard big air, ski slopestyle, ski cross and ski half-pipe.

Fans around the world can keep track of competitors when all the action kicks off using the latest live scoring technology. The event will feature real time scoring services that are accessible through any mobile phone or web browser. For iPhone users, the native iPhone app, eFAN, will also feature real time scoring for the Junior World Championships and is available from the App Store free of charge. Users can also browse results and start lists from earlier rounds, look up athlete profiles and access results when the event is over.

Virtual spectators can also access the live scoring via the event web site at www.juniorworldsnz.co.nz

The leading Finnish ski resort of Levi has already announced it will offer free skiing at the end of its very long season – next May (2011).

The resort, which recently opened a spectacular new water park, expects its 2010-11 ski season will begin by early November, this year and that it will last to May 8th, 2011.

It has announced skiing will be free during the last week of the season, that first week of May. The resort operates 28 lifts including Finland's only gondolas.

Levi only receives an average 1.2m (our feet) of natural snow each year but its northerly latitude means that the snow that falls, stays. About a third of the slopes also have snowmaking cover.
Courtesy of and © Snow24 plc