J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by J2SkiNews

The Ski Solutions 'Make a Wish' Ski Challenge moves to Champoluc next year from 14th – 17th March, 2013.

The inaugural charity fund-raising event launched last year and staged at another Aosta Valley resort, Courmayeur, will quadruple in size this season, with a target of 80 participants aiming to raise over £60,000 between them for Make a Wish.

The aim of the event is to clock up as many vertical metres as you can during the weekend win teams of two or three. Last year's event saw the winning team reaching 150% of the target 43,314 vertical metres by skiing or boarding 65,400 metres of vert. Participants are sponsored for their efforts and flexible all inclusive packages are available to cover travel and resort costs.

Last year's event raised a total of £17,169 for Make-A-Wish Foundation, a charity with a single purpose – to grant magical wishes to children and young people aged 3-17 fighting life-threatening illnesses. So far the charity has granted more than 7,000 magical wishes over 25 years.

Details of the 2013 event are yet to be finalised but advance registrations are being accepted at:
http://www.skisolutions.com/pages/ski-the-world-challenge-2013-register

For those who can't wait for the main ski season to start in December, a few dozen glacier ski areas and resorts at northerly latitudes in Scandinavia open from mid-September onwards, joining the few resorts like Saas Fee and Zermatt in Switzerland and Hintertux in Austria that have been open all summer and continue to be so.

In France only Tignes is open all autumn but a second resort, Les 2 Alpes, has traditionally staged a big opening week for two weekends and the five days between that usually corresponds with the school holiday period and attracts thousands of enthusiastic young skiers and boarders for new season gear testing and festival vibe.

This year is no different with the resort opening its glacier slopes and snow park from 27th October to 4th November 2012 before closing again for nearly four weeks until the official 2012-13 season opening date, 1st December 2012.

Last autumn in 2011 Les 2 Alpes started a new event was launched called 'Enjoy the Glacier' and this was such a success it is taking place again this year, between the glacier at 3,200m and the resort at 1,600m.

"Enjoy the Glacier' is a real 'taster' of the 2012-2013 winter season and it will be sporty and fun! Snowboard and skateboard contests, gear tests, the chance to meet with pros, a giant BBQ, gigs, movies… wintersports addicts, this is the place to be!" said Héléna Hospital from the Les 2 Alpes press office.

The weak Euro looks set to make skiing in Austria, France and Italy more affordable for Brits next winter.

With the official exchange rate passing 1.25 Euros to the pound and currency exchange bureaus offering up to 1.23 Euros to the pound in recent weeks, the cost of skiing in the Eurozone will be down more than a fifth on recent seasons, when the exchange rate reached almost parity and 1 Euro = 1 pound – if the current situation lasts until next winter.

In fact in some cases it is possible to make purchases of ski rental, ski school and lift tickets – as well as accommodation if booking direct – for those who already have their 2012-13 ski season holiday booked.

Many ski resorts in Austria already have their lift ticket pricing up online for 2012-13 with advance purchase and immediate payment offered by some. French resorts typically publish their prices later and Italian and Andorran last of all, but these should be appearing over the next eight weeks.

Set against the reducing cost of the Euro are price increases in ski resorts. Early indications are that these will vary tremendously with most resorts holding lift ticket increases to 2% or less, although 3 Valleys in bucking that trend with as cost increase of more than 6% on a six day ticket – but in all cases the stronger Euro means far greater savings than any price increases can nullify.

So far it is only the Euro zone that has seen a marked price decrease fpr Brits, the US and Canadian dollars along with the Swiss Franc all remain very strong.

And of course it is unknown whether the current exchange rate between the pound and the Euro will remain stable, or if the Euro will regain in strength, or if the pound will get stronger still against it.

The Hollywood Boulevard 'Walk of fame' has been a famous attraction for decades but how about a 'piste of fame' ?

That's now a reality at the 2013 Alpine Skiing World Championships venue of Schladming in Austria which has created just such a ski run in the Planai sector.

The "Slope of Fame" features the world's all-time skiing greats in life-size form. Skiers and boarders can also find out everything they need to know about the biggest ski stars of recent decades.

Skiing superstars who have made the slope of fame so far include Austrian living-legend Franz Klammer and Sweden's multi-medal winner Ingmar Stenmark.

The "Slope of Fame" is located on Schladming's most legendary piste, the 4.6-km (three mile) long FIS World Cup run, leaving plenty of space for lots of stars to be added!

Tour operator Zenith Holidays (www.zenithholidays.co.uk) is offering a discount on all of its holidays to ski destinations next winter to serving military personnel.

The military discount delivers 5% off catered chalet holidays, 5% off lift passes and 25% of ski packs and is available all season to all resorts to active military personnel.

Military discounts are an increasingly common options at North American and a few European resorts but are rarely offered by tour operators themselves.

Zenith was set up in 2009 by Stuart McLeod and Katie Waddington, both veterans of larger ski tour operators having worked at all levels from repping up to senior management.

As soon as it was launched the company immediately illustrated the flexibility and inventiveness of its business model by offering a range of autumn ski trips and an imaginative list of destinations that broke away from the usual list of big name destinations in the Alps to delve in to the best of the thousands of ski areas that never make it in to the big name tour operator's brochures.

That continues this autumn with Zenith offering early season trips to the Stubai, Pitztal, Zermatt and Les Deux Alpes as well as new destinations Les 7 Laux and Ax les Termes in France.

"Les 7 Laux offers excellent value, with a lead in price £218 per person based on four sharing and including lift pass," said Katie, "Half term is £304 per person based on four sharing with lift pass included."

Les 2 Alpes have announced they'll be offering more for freestyle skiers and boarders this winter.

The French resort, which offers altitude glacier skiing and boarding, will extend its freestyle area and it will be adapted to offer families who want to learn and have fun more manageable challenges. This translates in to more moguls, jumps, a mini pipe and smaller rails.

"The lift company has noticed that more and more skiers and boarders, of all levels, want to play in freestyle areas. The resort already has an excellent snowpark in the Toura area, a kid park and a slide area with gully, canyons, ledge and waterfalls but this new park will be an area where everyone, of all ages and levels, will feel confident to go and try tricks," said a statement from the resort.

Les 2 Alpes has also announced improvements to its beginners area at Les Crêtes up at a snowsure 2,100m. This will feature a long conveyor lift with weather protection, clear plastic cover and will be accessed from the base of the skis lopes by a new six seat chairlift which replaces the old gondola.

Les 2 Alpes will have its usual mid-autumn opening for glacier skiing and boarding and new equipment testing from 27 October to 4 November 2012 when only it and Tignes will be open in France, and will then have its full opening from 1st December 2012 with its season running to 27 April 2012.

A company called SPIKE which describes itself as a 'travel marketing consultancy' has compiled responses from 18,000 people on their ski holiday habits in what it claim it the largest consumer survey ever undertaken in the ski holiday market.

Among the SkiBase Reports findings were that mature skiers are spending as much time on the ski slopes as during the boom times of 2007/08 and effectively sustaining the current ski holiday market, with the number of new entrants to snowsports in decline.

"Overall, skiers are saying they intend to take more ski holidays over the next five years" says Roy Barker, Director of SPIKE. "We wouldn't interpret that is saying the market is set to boom, but longer term it shows the ski market is in good shape for the future."

Other findings from the survey were that Italy has chosen as the top destination nation for UK skiers based on ratings for quality of skiing, accommodation value for money, restaurants and bars, lifts and activities outside skiing.

Eastern Europe scored the lowest when it came to the perception of quality among respondents, although it scored highly when it came to value for money. Switzerland was rated as the least value for money.

North America was home to four of the top five individual ski resorts in terms of popularity, with Whistler in Canada rated the best overall ski resort in the world with a satisfaction score of 72.9, followed by Banff, (63.1) Vail (61.5) and Breckenridge (59.7).

Tignes in France was fifth in the world and best In Europe with (43.5).

SPIKE says the survey is, "...part of an ongoing project to provide insight and direction for the ski industry."

Austria's Gastein ski region has announced a new ski route named "Katstall" is being created for the 2012-13 ski season.

Ski routes are an increasingly popular idea, particularly in Austria and Switzerland. They are patrolled runs which appear on the piste map, usually in yellow, and give an 'off piste experience' being left ungroomed, but are still official pistes.

The Katstall ski route will descend from the Kasereben lift's top station and run down through the heart of the Angertal ski area. It will only be open when snow cover is good.

The new route is part of a multi-pronged policy by Gastein to increase the area's attractiveness to freeriders, or what we used to call off piste skiers and snowboarders.

A second new development on that theme is the creation of a new Freeride Info Base at Sportgastein which provides current avalanche reports, a terrain map with ski routes clearly marked, and electronic equipment which can check that avalanche transceivers carried by freeriders are working correctly.

Gastein's lifty company will also create an avalanche search and rescue practice area in the valley Sportgastein where skiers and boarders can practice hunting for previously buried avalanche transceivers.