J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by J2SkiNews

High hopes at Mammoth last November as winter 2010-11 Began!

Ski areas in the USA reported a record 60.54 million skier visits last season, thanks largely it seems to record-breaking snowfall in the West of the country, and largely-good conditions for most of the season in the East too.
Skier numbers were further helped when a record 11 ski areas opened for Fourth of July celebrations, thanks to huge snow bases built up through last winter and spring, attracting tens of thousands more skiers to their slopes for the first weekend of July.
The country's industry body the National Ski Areas Association said the 60.54 million skier/snowboarder visits figure was 0.1 percent more than the previous record of 60.5 million set in 2007-08 and marked a return to growth after two years of worldwide-recession linked decline.
It was also only the second time that US resorts attracted more than 60 million skier visits and snowfall was up by nearly 30% on the average, at the highest level ever recorded in 20 yrars of collating snowfall data.

Meribel has announced its key improvements for the coming winter 2011-12 and the creation of a new piste (although, as with other new pistes announced and opened around the 3 Valleys over the past 35 years, it seems unlikely this will add to the static 600km total runs measure the area has claimed since the early 1970s).
The new run, a green, will be accessible from the top of the first section of the Saulire Express to the Blanchot.
In addition work has got underway on an 18 month project upgrade the Plattières gondola. The lower two sections will be merged in to one, helping to reduce the overall ascent time by more than half down from 25 minutes to nine in time for the 2012/13 ski season. The new lift will be 3,178 metres long with eight-seater cabins and an uplift capacity of 2,700 passenger per hour.
Some of the improvements currently being made to the Burgin Saulire lift will be completed this winter however so that the lift will now make its ascent to the summit in just 12 minutes. The second section of the Saulre Express will be operational from this December with a capacity of 2,000 skiers per hour, with the first section is scheduled to be completed a year later for December 2012
Finally the 'Magnestick Bar' safety system for children that has been installed on several lifts at the neighbouring resort of Courchevel for several seasons will this year be extended to all the detachable chairlifts in the Meribel Valley and indeed the entire Three Valleys.

Aspen in Colorado will invest over $26 million (£16.5 million) in on-mountain improvements for next winter including a new high-speed quad lift at Buttermilk, a complete remodel of the Merry-Go-Round restaurant on Aspen Highlands and the first phase of the new Elk Camp Restaurant at Snowmass.

The new quad chairlift at Tiehack on Buttermilk, built by Leitner Poma, will replace both the Eagle Hill and the Upper Tiehack lifts, cutting the combined ride time from 18 minutes to just under seven minutes. Construction began in spring on the $7 million [£4.4 million] Tiehack Express project, with completion anticipated in December 2011.

Buttermilk's summer trail crew is currently cleaning up the gladed terrain on the Tiehack side of the mountain with the intention of breathing new life into this underutilized area. The rolling, gladed and groomed terrain is ideal for skiers and riders looking for single black trails off the beaten track.

During the past eight seasons, ASC has invested over $164 million [£102 million] in Aspen/Snowmass adding 11 new lifts including two new gondolas and, among pther things, the new Snowmass base village, the Treehouse Kids' Adventure Centre, a complete interior remodel of The Little Nell hotel, the launch of four new restaurants and the opening of new ski terrain.

International visitors accounted for more than 20 per cent of winter business to Aspen/Snowmass in the 2010/11 season, accessing the resort's four ski mountains on one lift ticket - Snowmass, Aspen Mountain, Aspen Highlands and Buttermilk.

Les 2 Alpes - open now

Snow cover on the 10 or so ski areas still open for summer skiing in Europe is diminishing rapidly as temperatures touch double figures above zero in centigrade.
Dachstein ski area in Austria saw its snow depth drop by more than a metre in less than a month, losing 30-40cm a week, and has closed for snow sports.
Other ski areas have reported similar declines but beginning with deeper snow bases, are still able to operate, though on the Kitzsteinhorn above Kaprun it's only the highest slopes.
But although Val d'Isere ends its short, five-week, summer ski season this weekend, more ski areas are opening. Saas Fee in Switzerland, Molltal in Austria and Breuil-Cervinia in Italy have all re-opened in the past week.
Saas Fee will be open right through to May 2012 while the skiing on Cervinia's Plateau Rosà glacier will be open until the beginning of September before closing for a few months and re-opening winter 2011-12.
Cervinia's summer skiing above 3,480 metres has 23km and great freestyle facilities including a half-pipe at Gravity Park on Plateau Rosà. Daily tickets are 15 Euros for children and 30 Euros for adults.
Also currently open are Tux in Austria, Zermatt in Switzerland, Val Senales and Passo Stelvio in Italy and Tignes and Les 2 Alpes in France.

Austria - On The Up

Crystal, the UK's largest tour operator, have released their annual study of the UK ski market. The bad news is that it was down again for the third season in a row, after hopes a year ago that last winter would be the 'bounce back winter.' The good news is that Crystal reckon that the smaller decline last winter was due to exceptional circumstances, in particular Easter being at it's next-to-latest possible date on April 24th ruling out a lot of destinations for Easter breaks. The good news for tour operators too, Crystal say, is thast their share of the market increased by 1%. The top seven operators' market shares representing 85% of the total tour operator market.
The Crystal Ski Industry Report 2011 found the market declined by about 5% to 910,900 in 2010/11 following two previous years of decline of 13.3% and 11% respectively.
The independent travel sector showed the biggest fall (by 8.2% to 270,200 skiers, down from 294,300) predominantly as a result of the continuing increase in flight and ski carriage costs.
Sadly the schools market also experienced a reduction in volume for the second time since 1999/2000 with a fall of 3.7%, similarly affected by the Easter shift.
"Crystal Ski strengthened its market leadership last season to 32%, up from 28% due to its attractive Ski Plus packages, and Thomson Ski also saw an increase of 2000 skiers. First Choice saw a fall in its market share from 22,000 to 10,000 as a result of capacity reductions. However, TUI Ski remains the clear market leader with 40% share, up from 37% last year." said a statement from the company.
France continues to be the most popular country with British skiers accounting for 32.5% in the 2010/11 season. However, this is the third consecutive year of fall in market share (down from 33.2% last winter) predominantly due to the ongoing perception of high prices in resort. By Contrast Austria, Bulgaria and Andorra bounced back a little. North America was slightly down due to fuel supplement costs.
"The Crystal Ski Industry Report finds strong evidence that customers have stayed away due to financial constraints rather than falling out of love with the sport. The report predicts that skiers will continue to be price-sensitive next season, but the more favourable calendar combined with a hopefully more stable economic environment could lead to a "bottoming out" of the market." said the statement.
The full report is online here: http://mag.digitalpc.co.uk/fvx/crystal/sir2011/

Crystal, the UK's biggest tour operator, have announced they'll be offering holidays to the 2014 Winter Olympics resort of Sochi for the coming winter 2011-12.
Sochi has seen one of the biggest investments in new lifts, resort infrastructure and hotels ever seen over the past few years, and while investment is on-going ahead of the Olympics, several of the new resort bases are largely complete.
Details of the Crystal packages have not yet been officially published but J2ski has been advised that while details have not yet been finally agreed, packages will almost certainly include flights from Heathrow via Istanbul to Adler/Sochi airport with Turkish Airlines, followed by hour long private transfers and include seven nights half board or bed and breakfast in four and five star hotels.
Hotels to choose from will include the five star Grand Hotel Polyana with prices from GBP935 per person and the four star Hotel Park Inn by Radisson in Rosa Khutor with prices expected to be from GBP825 per person.
The last ski holidays to Russia were offered in the early 1990s as 'extreme skiing holidays' to soviet era Russian training bases in the Caucasus. The new Sochi resorts 20 years later are much more like modern North American resort developments and have indeed been designed by companies involved in resort design in Canada and the USA, managed by former Vail executives in some cases and built by Western European companies such as lift-manufacturer Doppelmayr.

Squaw Valley picture by Hank de Vre

As reported on J2ski.com a few weeks ago, a record number of US resorts plan to open in a few hours time for snowsports on Independence Day, July 4th, following record snowfall last Autumn, Winter and spring in the West of the country.
11 ski areas in five states are known to be opening today.
California has the most resorts re-opening, up around Lake Tahoe, including Alpine Meadows, Donner Summit, Squaw Valley, Kirkwood and Sugarbowl. Mammoth Mountain to the south has already opened. A 'heat advisory' for dangerously hot conditions in the San Francisco Bay are from the US Weather Service for today may send more people up to the snowline.
Alpine Meadows has only opened on the 4th of July once before in its 50 year history.
In Utah the options are snowbird and Snowbasin. Snowbird received 95 inches (nearly 2.5 metres) more snow this winter than its previous record 688 inches.
The three other choices are Timberline in Oregon, Arapahoe Basin in Colorado and Crystal Mountain in Washington State.
Most of the resorts are expected to be calling it a day for the 2010-11 season after today. Although most of the Tahoe resorts re-opened for this weekend only, Arapahoe Basin, Crystal Mountain Snowbasin and Snowbird have all been open at weekends since the end of the main ski season in April and Mammoth and Timberline have been open daily since last autumn.
Only Crystal Mountain has announced it plans to stay open next weekend at least and timberline usually stays open to mid-September only as North America's only all-summer-long summer snowsports resort. Most other areas, including Arapahoe Basin and Snowbird, have announced today is the last day for snowsports. A Basin last opened for July 4th snowsports in 1997.
North of the border Whistler is the only open option for skiers and boarders with a few weeks left of its summer skiing schedule on the Blackcomb glacier. It celebrated Canada day last Friday, July 1st.

There's either an Alpine skiing world championships or a winter Olympics three years out of every four, so winter 11-12, when there isn't either, is the kind of rare one-year-in-four when no international competition takes place.
However Vancouver will still be talking about the 2010 games and Schladming, Sochi and Vail/Beaver Creek will be looking forward to their 2013, 2014 and 2015 events no doubt.
But the most recent host of a the Alpine Skiing World Championships was Garmisch Partenkirchen in Germany earlier this year and they intend to capitalise on it in the coming winter.
"Our main focus for the 2011/12 season is the championship run "Kandahar". It was partly remodelled and enlarged for the world championships last winter and will be open for everybody the next season. Every skier has the chance to challenge himself on this spectacular run." said a resort spokeswoman.
Garmisch's Zugspitze ski area, the country's highest, usually opens the first weekend in November and is open until the first of May. Garmisch-Classic opens in mid-December until the end of Easter Holidays (15. April 2012) (all dates depending on the snow situation).