J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by J2SkiNews

It's at this time of year the news of new hotels, lifts, pistes and everything else in ski resorts for next winter starts to appear.

Usually it's an old drag lift becoming a new chairlift, more snow making or a new luxury hotel but every now and then something new comes along.

Step forward duty-free paradise Livigno, in a fairly remote spot in the Italian Alps, but worth the effort if you want very affordable après skiing alongside a large ski area.

New for winter 2012-13 there is a 'Cable Snow Park' – a previously unknown concept that seems to be a development on the increasingly popular 'snow kiting' where skiers or boarders are strapped to a kite and dragged around a fairly horizontal snow field by the power of the wind.

In the case of Livigno's new cable snow park it's a machanised device with a cable dragging you around rather than mother nature.

Accessed from lift number 20 in the Fontana sector the new track is designed to entice wakeboarders and kitesurfers on to the snow as well as snowboarders and freestyle skiers.

The track will offer a variety of difficulty levels from beginners to advanced, and feature terrain park favourites including rails, box, a wall ride, rainbow rail and jumps.

Most of the world's ski areas have now closed up shop, but Mammoth Mountain in California is famous for staying open to late spring and at least once as late as August.

This year may be an exception as after the poor snowfall weather up to March in the western USA (excepting the most northerly states) most ski areas have now closed but Mammoth says it will stay open to late May at least.

To keep interest up the resort has a number off special camps with famous American skiers and boarders over the US memorial Day Holiday weekend.

These include a Skier Cross Camp with X Games Gold Medalist John Teller (May 19 - 20, 2012, $299 plus lift ticket) at which participants are promised they will learn the secrets to speed with the first American to win a World Cup Ski Cross event.

Special discounted race camp lift tickets are available to camp participants, as well as a 20% saving on lodging costs, who should have strong Intermediate ski racing skills (or better) and will be required to wear a helmet and back protector required. GS and SG skis are recommended.

Cairngorm ski area above Aviemore in Scotland is one of less than 30 ski areas still open for winter 2011-12 and is possibly reporting the best visitor number levels of any of them as pent up demand for Scottish skiing continues to bring thousands of skiers to Scottish slopes each weekend.

With all ski areas in France closing for the season last week, only one glacier centre currently open in Italy and a handful more in Switzerland and Austria, the best skiing to be had at present is in northern areas including Scotland and Scandinavia. Norway's Folgefonn summer ski area opened last weekend with 80cm of fresh snow and staff having to clear access roads of deep snow.

In North America only Whistler and Sunshine at Banff will be open in Canada as of next week after Lake Louise has a final weekend. In the US a handful of ski areas remain open in the west, at weekends at least.

Cairngorm however seems to be going from strength to strength, with fresh snow pretty much every day for weeks now and temperatures hovering around freezing. Scotland has not had quite the wet April and early May of most of England and there have been some beautiful blue sky days. Last weekend saw 2500 people on the slopes, the weekend before 4000.

The 2011-12 ski season ended bin France yesterday when the last two resorts still operating, Tignes and Val Thorens, called it a day on the season.

Unlike the other 'big 4' Alpine nations, France no longer has glacier skiing year round, and it will be six weeks until Tignes, Les 2 Alpes and Val d'Isere re-open for summer skiing.
There is however the option of snow skiing in France today still – on the world longest indoor snow slope at Amneville – a 600mn run in an old mining town not far south of the Channel in the north of the country.

The stats are not yet in but it looks like the country will have had a good winter despite hard economic times. After Val Thorens, which had due to be the first in the country to open (Other than Tignes which had been open all through autumn) was forced to delay opening in November due to high temperatures and no natural snowfall,. A deluge of white stuff in December and January brought record snowfall which kept most areas, although especially the higher ones, in great shape for the rest of the season and the big name resorts closed with still two metres or more of snow on their slopes in many cases.

Now looking ahead to 2012-13 the first announcements of plans to keep skiing affordable during the ongoing 'Eurozone economic crisis' are coming out. The 3 Valleys, the world's biggest ski area, have announced a new "Tribu" skipass will be available for any three or more people buying a 6 day lift pass at the same time,

"It will be available from three people who don't need to be of the same family they can just be friends," said a statement from the resort.

A 3 Vallées Tribu pass will be 657 Euros for three people or 219 Euros, and more friends can join the group purchase for 219 Euros each.

A six day 3 Valleys pass last season was 235 Euros and the price is set to jump next winter.

A similar version is available for individual sectors – Les Menuires/St Martin is 503.10 Euros for three people, or 167.70 Euros each for three or more for example.

Clearly the ticket is offered to groups of friends or family arriving together but It's not yet clear if you can just 'make friends' with people standing in the lift queue with you and just buy your passes together. Best to carry cash perhaps.

Saalbach Hinterglemm in Austria has announced that it is upgrading another drag lift straight to a six-passenger chairlift for the coming winter 2012-13.

Saalbach will now operate 10 six-seater chairlifts along with one eight seater and 15 gondolas – most of them eight seaters giving it an uplift capacity of just shy of 100,000 people per hour and putting it in the world top three in terms of the number of high capacity chairlifts and of gondolas it operates.

Only Ischgl and La Plagne operate more six seater chairs (11 each) and only the Meribel Valley and Italy's Plan de Corones ski areas in the dolomites operate more gondola lifts (16 and 22 respectively).

In separate research, Saalbach, which with more than two million visitors each year (many German) is also in the world top 10 for skier numbers, and operates 200km (125 miles) of piste in its 'ski circus' was found to be 11th in the world and top in the Alps for the popularity of its Facebook page with 52,195 fans.

Only it and Grandvalira in Andorra have more than 50,000 Facebook fans in Europe but four resorts in North America have passed the 100,000 fans park since the start of this year; Heavenly (tope with over 122,000 fans), Mammoth, Vail and Whistler.

French resort Avoriaz is set to complete its latest expansion and transformation next winter with the opening of Aquariaz, the first Centre-Parcs style indoor waster park on a mountain.

The coming of Aquariaz has been trumpeted for more than a year now by Avoriaz owners Pierre and Vacances (P&V) which began life in the (still) stylish pourpose-built centre above Morzine more than 40 years ago.

P&V has since grown to become the world's largest ski resort operator, and also now runs plenty of summer theme parks across Europe too, and recently snapped up Centre Parcs – hence the Aquariaz development.

Aquariaz fills the need, P&BV see, for a growing leisure market that no longer wants to just ski all day or hike and bike in the summer, but wants a complete holiday destination up the mountain with leisure activities available indoors if the weather is a tad inclement, whatever the season.

The Aquariaz complex will spread over 2000 square metres and will be contained within a giant glass dome a la Logan's Run. It will contain large tropical swimming pools, a lazy river and water slides as well as other facilities such as a climbing wall. It's not yet now if a combi ski and swim lift ticket will be available but if you can't wait for next winter, Aquariaz is due to open in May.

It's the latest (and probably, to date, greatest) of a string of new leisure facilities that have been appearing across the French Alps in the past few years including at Tignes, Val d'Isere, Les Arcs and la Plagne. It's also the latest part of an Avoriaz expansion that has seen new 'accommodation neighbourhoods' added and major lift upgrades, including the cable car from Morzine, opened last season or announced for next.

OK most of us are looking ahead to winter 12-13 now, but anyone who can afford to pop over to Europe in the next few weeks will find that most of the diminishing number of ski areas still open can boast substantial fresh snowfalls, again, in the past week.

April has not only been cool and moist in Blighty, it has been dumping down on the Alps and the Dolomites with several resorts including Val d'Isere and Chamonix reported to be waking up to about a foot of fresh snow every morning.

There is some differences of opinion between the reports from the resorts themselves of abundant new white stuff, and slightly less glamorous reports from some skiers and boarders in resort who say powder stashes can be found, but that rain however must also be endured at lower elevations and that sometimes it just isn't pretty.

Although on the other hand one first hand report from Verbier said it was perfect conditions, empty slopes and fresh powder.

For the record, some of the numbers are as follows...four feet (1.2m) of snow in the past seven days claimed by La Clusaz, two feet (60cm) at Solden, 18 inches (45cm) in the past 48 hours at La Plagne and a foot (30cm) in Risoul/Vars.

Verbier is among a long list of some of Europe's best ski areas scheduled to close this weekend.

Also on the list are Cortina, Val d'Isere, La Plagne, Meribel, Courchchevel, Les 2 Alps, Alpe d'Huez and La Clusaz.
After the weekend only Chamonix, Tignes and Val Thorens will be open for one more weekend in France, Cervinia in Italy and glacier resorts like Engelberg and Zermatt in Switzerland and the Pitztal and Stubai glaciers in Austria.

This weekend will also see big season ending events across Europe including festivals at Are in Sweden, Solden in Austria, Hemsedal in Norway, a giant water sliding concert in La Clusaz where competitors will try to break the 150m+ record and a big Mariah Carey concert at Ischgl on Monday.

(Pic: The Snow Dome, Hemel Hempstead (C) Washbrooke - Harpenden, Herts, England - Tel: +44 (0) 7991853325 - richard@washbrooke.com - http://www.richardwashbrooke.photoshelter.com)

The chances of the UK's biggest indoor snow slope being built have taken an apparent step backwards with the news that the main person behind the project has been declared bankrupt.

Snoasis envisages a disused quarry near Great Blakenham in Suffolk being transformed in to an indoor winter sports resort including a slope at least twice as long as the UK's longest to date. First announced around eight years ago it finally went to a public enquiry before getting the go ahead just around the time off property crash. Subsequent delays have been blamed on issues around protecting rare newts found on the site.

Godfrey Spanner, the gentleman concerned, has resigned from the board f developers Onslow Suffolk and says he remains confident the project will still go ahead. Planning permission is still valid for another four and a half years to late 2016.
The UK has six existing indoor snow centres including the world's oldest still operational, the Tamworth Snowdome, which was built 20 years ago and has trademarked the word 'snowdome' in the UK so that other indoor snow centres can't be called that.
The other five centres are at Milton Keynes, Braehead near Glasgow, Trafford near Manchester, Castleford between Leeds and Hull and the newest, the Snow Centre north of London.

Over the years there have been dozens of proposals for other indoor snow centres around the UK, most of which have not ultimately been built.

However UK towns and cities which are currently slated to get indoor snow centres include Weston Super Mare where work on an indoor snow slope linked to a large housing development is scheduled to begin this year.

Swindon too is due to see indoor snowfall in a few years time in the second phase of a redevelopment of a leisure centre there, and a 10 year old plan for an indoor snow centre for Cardiff has recently been given fresh impetus with the local council deciding on preferred bidders for the plan. There also remain plans for a centre in Blackpool.

Worldwide around 60 indoor snow centres are operation in 25 countries, the longest a 600m slope in France and the biggest covering 30,000 square metres in the Netherlands with an indoor 6 seat chairlift and hosting World Cup snowboarding events.

Although many skiers remain sceptical about the value of indoor ski centres, niche website snow365.com has estimated that 30 million people have learned to ski in them worldwide over the past 25 years making a substantial contribution to the wider ski industry.