J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by J2SkiNews

Chemmy Alcott, the 4 x Winter Olympian and one of Britain's greatest ever skiers has been having fun travelling the London's transport network in full snow sports attire, complete with skis and helmet.

It's all to promote the upcoming London Snow Show at the ExCeL on 21-22 October, the capital's first ski show since 2019 and this time from a different company to the old one.

Chemmy surprised commuters at the Waterloo Underground Station and then took to more familiar ski territory, if not location, riding the gondola currently called the IFS Cloud Cable car.


The London show is being organised by the group that has organised the revived Birmingham NEC show for the past three years. That takes place the weekend before London and the organisers have named the nine days bookmarked by the two shows the National Snow Week.

"I am thrilled to be appearing at National Snow Week's inaugural London Snow Show this year. The Snow Show has grown over the years and is now bigger and better than ever before and will be in the Capital for the first time. The slopes are more accessible than ever and this is the perfect place for both beginners and those already comfortable with snow sports," said Chemmy.

Speakers at both show include Ed Leigh, British snowsports presenter and commentator; Eve Muirhead, Olympic curling champion; Eddie 'The Eagle' Edwards, The British 'people's' champion; Dan Egan, world-renowned skier and pioneer of extreme sports; Millie Knight, four-time Paralympic ski medallist; Neil 'Nine Lives' Campbell, pro snowboarder and Talan Skeels-Piggins, paralympic British Team alpine skier, and Chemmy.

The London Snow Show takes place between 10am - 5:30pm and the Saturday and 10am and 4pm on the Sunday.

Free tickets are available at: https://nationalsnowweek.com/


Photos by Drew Cox

A new artificial ski slope development in Romania's Gorj County is due to open at the end of October.

Building the Aprilia Park complex's ski hill has involved the moving of tens of thousands of cubic metres of excavated soil in a year-long construction project, the developers say.

Aprilia Park say the slope, which uses Neveplast material, which will be 311 metres long with a total area of 7,000 square metres. It will have three tubing runs using Neveplast's Tubby tubing service running alongside the slope.

The Aprilia Park complex has been operating since 2011 and up to now has been mainly a waterpark featuring 4,000 square metres of beach, with a capacity of 1,500 people, three large hot water pools, a 25-seat jacuzzi, water slides, waterfalls, fountains and numerous other aquatic attractions. It also offers sports such as basketball, beach volleyball and table tennis.

The centre has three restaurants and offers accommodation in cottages with 2 and 4 beds, a camping area and a caravan park.

Romania is believed to have almost 100 conventional ski areas but most are small facilities with one or two drag lifts. It's largest resorts include Poiana Brasov and Sinaia which each have 15-20km of slopes.

Aprilia Ski will open on 28th October, 2023.

Snowfall has been reported around the Lake Tahoe region for the first time for several ski areas as a major stormfront hit the Californian Coast, bringing torrential rain to lower elevations.

It's less than two months since Mammoth Mountain closed after one of its longest ever seasons, running well into August, following huge snowfalls in the state last winter.

Mt Rose, pictured above, is often among the first to open in California and North America in early November most years.

There's currently some nervousness about how sinter 23-24 will play out for snowfall on north America's West Coast with a strong El Niño climate pattern forming which reflects unusual warming of surface waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean off the coast after three successive 'La Niña winters'.

These typically deliver warmer, wetter conditions although nothing is ever certain and some El Niño winters were still cold enough for the above average precipitation to fall as huge amounts of snow.

Although last winter's repeating huge snowfalls brought stunning amounts of snowfall, they also caused lots of disruption, hitting business at key points of the season, so some Californian ski areas might be happy with a little less falling this winter, a little less often.

The start of the ski season in Breckenridge is just six weeks away and the resort, one of America's highest and home to the world's highest chairlift, has already seen several snowfalls this September (picture above was taken 21 September).

This winter there are upgrades at the Peak 8 base. On the heels of installing the newly upgraded Rip's Ride in 2022, now for the 2023/24 winter season, this winter will see a new, dedicated learning area plus the upgrade of 5-Chair to a new, high-speed quad – the Five SuperChair.

With this lift upgrade, all four chairlifts that service Peak 8 will now be high-speed with the aim of improving skier flow and circulation out of the heart of the resort, providing faster and easier access to the resort's Five Peaks.

"The new Five SuperChair will serve as a primary portal lift for skiers and boarders out of Peak 8, and with its upgrade, Peak 8 will offer a clear path to progression across its lifts, with Rip's Ride area servicing learning and beginner terrain, Five SuperChair servicing beginner and intermediate terrain, and the Colorado and Rocky Mountain SuperChairs servicing intermediate and advanced terrain," a Breckenridge spokesperson said.

Breckenridge has one of the earliest confirmed opening dates in America, November 10th. It's likely a few others will open earlier but that depends on the snow. It usually stays open for seven months to late May each season.

Finland's largest ski resort of Levi will begin the task of spreading 130 000 m³ of stored snow out on its front slopes today, Friday 29th September.

The resort, along with fellow Finnish ski centre, Ruka, plan to open for their 23-24 seasons next Friday 6th October.

Both say they stockpiled record amounts of snow last spring using snow farming techniques. They have also improved storage techniques year on year to minimise loss due to thawing through the summer.
Both resorts plan to create several runs with a combined length of over 2km. As temperatures drop these are topped up by snowmaking, and the two areas also saw natural snowfall next week.

Describing the job of moving the snow as "a monumental task" Levi also abnounced they had a live stream set up of the process at:

La Plagne, one of the world's most popular ski resorts and thus generating hundreds of thousands of flight seats each winter as skiers fly to Geneva or Chambery to get to it, is making a concerted effort to promote low carbon travel to its ten village bases, particularly by rail or bus.

"La Plagne's very own online travel agency, La Plagne Resort, is now only proposing train or bus travel in its all-inclusive packages for long-distance journeys to the resort," a statement from la Plagne ahead of the23-24 ski season announced.

It also published data suggesting that while a rail journey from London would generated less than 4kg of CO2, the equivalent car trip would generate nearly 240kg or almost 60 times more, although it wasn't clear if this was per car or per person in the car and how efficient the example car was with the stats supplied by the Avenir Climatique website.

La Plagne notes that the French national rail service SNCF and Altibus (the bus link to the resort villages) will carry one pair of skis or a snowboard per passenger in addition to your main luggage.

On the Thalys train, "Skihost" staff wearing red jackets can help you get your luggage on and off the train. In addition to the usual luggage racks, there is additional space in two of the carriages. A secure area at the front of the train (not accessible during the journey) is also offered.

La Plagne was awarded the 'Zero Carbon Mountain' Award earlier this year at the Alpipro trade show, to reward the resort's commitment to the energy transition.

In concrete terms, three actions have been undertaken since 2021: the drafting of a Corporate Social Responsability report, the preparation of a destination carbon footprint measure and the launch of the process to obtain the Mountain Riders Association's Flocon Vert (green snowflake) label.

Data from analysts Cirium published by holiday company Ski Solutions has revealed that flight numbers from December 2023 are the close yet to those for December 2019, signalling a post pandemic 'return to normal' for ski holidays by air.

In total the number of flights is 96% of the level it was four years ago prior to the pandemic with some destinations more popular than they were back then. For all but one destination, the December 2023 flight numbers are actually greater than December 2019.

Geneva dwarfs the other major ski hum airports with 1,607 flights from the UK expected this December. That's up 11% on 2019 and 7% on a year ago.

Milan's airports are the only others that (collectively) expect to see more than 1,000 flights in December with 1,190, up 10% on last December's 1,079. However it's also the only major hub still down on 2019 numbers, by 13%, from 1,372 flights four years ago.

Austria's Salzburg and Innsbruck have seen the greatest growth in flight numbers between 2019 and 2023, up 41 and 42% respectively. Salzburg is up from 150 to 212 flights between December four years ago and this coming December, Innsbruck from 144 to 205.

Lyon, used to access southern French resorts like Alpe d'Huez and Les 2 Alpes is seeing the greatest number of extra flights compared to a year ago, up 38% from 232 to 319 flights.

An expansion of terrain on Aspen Mountain on terrain formerly known as 'Pandora's' has been rechristened 'Hero's' ahead of the resort's opening day scheduled for Thursday 23 November.

Hero's will increase skiable acreage on Aspen Mountain by more than 20% and will be served by a new high-speed quad chairlift.

The expansion is Aspen Mountain's first significant addition since the opening of the Silver Queen Gondola in 1985.

The new terrain, previously accessed only be freeriders and tourers, offers 1,220 vertical feet and more than 150 acres of chutes, glades and trails that are newly accessed by the lift.

In a press statement, Aspen Snowmass said renaming Pandora's to Hero's was intended, "…to honour all those who have made an impact on Aspen Mountain and helped bring this project to life – most impactfully, Jim Crown, whose vision and leadership helped bring this ambitious expansion to reality."

The additional terrain means Aspen Mountain now has a greater proportion of skiing on the upper portion of the mountain which the resort states, "…acts as a functional hedge against future climate-challenged ski seasons" …with its north-facing, high elevation terrain (all above 10,000 ft.)

"This area is ideal for holding snow in seasons when natural snowfall is less plentiful. The terrain and lift will open this winter when conditions allow.," the resort statement concludes.