J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by SwingBeep

Snapzzz wrote: I wouldn't waste your money taking lessons indoors, the slopes are to short to get a decent run to really perfect your parallel turns.

I don't think these guys would agree with you.

http://vimeo.com/56882024

The Monterosa lift company website http://www.monterosa-ski.com/it/sciare/sciare.html states that the total length of the pistes in the Monterosa ski area is 180 km.

No one in the skiing industry has seriously disputed these figures. In response to their publication Franz Hörl the chairman of the Austrian cableway operators association and member of the Austrian parliament has called for the establishment of a European piste measurement standard, as the problem affects the whole of central Europe.

Christoph Schrahe, a German cartographer has measured the length of the pistes along the fall line down the middle of the pistes in 80 ski resorts and found that in many cases they are considerably shorter than the lengths given on the piste maps.

When asked to comment Reinhard Klier the CEO of the Stubaier Gletscher ski area said that they gave the length of the pistes not as the length along the fall line, but as the length of a line that arcs from one edge of the piste to the other, which they calculated by multiplying the fall line length by Pi/2 (1.7) in order to simulate the actual route taken by a skier. He also said that they measured pistes wider than 100m twice!

The table below was assembled from Austrian, German and Swiss press reports. It would appear that each ski area has its own system of measurement.



Ski areas that do not follow this practice and give the length of their pistes as the fall line length include: St Anton, Lech and Zurs, Kitzbühel, Saalbach-Hinterglem, Espace Diamant, Sierra Nevada and Parnassos in Greece.

andymol2 wrote: Local employment in the EU effectively means anyone in the EU. We are free (or should be) work as EU citizens in any EU state as if we were at home. Host countries are not permitted to put up artificial barriers to free employment.

This assumption incorrect.

The guiding principle is that persons to whom the regulations apply are subject to the legislation of a single member state only. In the case of employed and self employed persons the legislation of the member state where the activity is carried out usually applies. This principle is referred to as lex loci laboris.

I have no idea.

Most of the people employed by the UK TOs are employed as "posted workers" and as such their terms and conditions of employment are subject to the Posting of Workers Directive 96/71/EC http://www.accountingweb.co.uk/article/posted-workers-eu-proposals-table/530887 This website concerns the construction industry http://www.posting-workers.eu/content/default.asp?PageID=106 If you click on France you should be able to get some idea of what's involved. Bear in mind that European employment law generally favours the employee whereas UK employment law favours the employer.

At last you're beginning to get it!
As I said a few posts ago the hosting issue is only the tip of the iceberg.

Here in Switzerland they do charge, as in a downhill ski area the trails have to be prepared. Costs vary depending on the length of the trails, a day ticket for a small area usually costs less than 10 Francs and one for a larger area about 15 Francs. A season pass for all of Switzerland's cross country skiing trails costs 120 Francs.

An animateur is usually a youth worker.

The Code du Sport stipulates that "in occasional cases within the framework of the educational activities of the holiday centre or in leisure centres, supervision can be carried out by the holders of the Brevet d'Aptitude aux Fonctions d'Animateur (BAFA)".

The training for the BAFA alpine skiing diploma lasts 6 days.

As TonyH says this is going nowhere, the provision of this service is illegal full stop. It is not only illegal in France it's also illegal in the other Alpine countries, Austria has just announced a crack down http://austriantimes.at/news/Sports/2013-02-26/47147/Controls_of_illegal_ski_instructors_inefficient and the Swiss have announced a general crack down on EU citizens who break Swiss residency and employment law.

This is just the tip of the iceberg.