I am not sure it is the oldest ski club in the world – I believe the Davos Ski Club might have that distinction, but no other ski club has been continuously in operation longer than the SCGB. The founding meeting famously occurred in the Café Royal, in London, on 6th May 1903.
At it’s peak the Ski Club had representatives and offices across Europe and a stately headquarters in Eaton Square. Many famous names in the evolution of skiing were intimately associated with the Ski Club, such as Sir Arnold Lunn, and many people distinguished in other fields held high office, notably past president, Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding.
The Ski Club has continuously adapted in its long history and still has over 20,000 members and an active presence in leading ski resorts. it also operates a successful holiday operation and has one of the best ski web sites around. The current president is the Olympic skier, Chemmy Alcott.
The Club operates out of more modest premises these days, not far from the Oval in London. However it’s rich history has been retained and is largely in the custodianship of de Montford University in Leicester, where 50 linear metres of archived material are held. Together with Professor Peter Slee, Vice-Chancellor of Leeds Beckett University, I am hoping to ensure that we can ensure that the heritage of the Ski Club, and indeed Britain’s contribution to the evolution of skiing, is maintained and, with both the risks and opportunities of the digital age, is made more widely available for members, researchers and anyone else who is interested in the history of this incredible sport.
The 2022/3 season has finished for all but a handful of ski areas on shrinking glaciers. it’s always a bittersweet time of the year. Spring skiing is full of icy early morning runs, sunny lunches on mountain restaurant terraces, heavy evening resort runs and al fresco après ski. And the knowledge it will be six or more months before most of us visit the slopes again.
I feel it in my aging, aching bones each season. Every year I become less adventurous, pause longer between runs and – whilst I always start early in the day – finish earlier.
This season may have been atypical in many ways. Firstly it was the first proper season post the pandemic (although in many regards it is still with us). However we also saw some prolonger periods of warm weather and little precipitation. Global warming or just a bad season? Who knows. But global warming is a feature, and it impacts winter sports more than any other sport.
Most symptomatic of changing weather patterns is the shrinkage of glaciers. The melting of the world’s glaciers has nearly doubled in speed over the past 20 years, according to an article in Nature published a couple of years ago. In many resorts the rapid shrinkage of glaciers is all to obvious to the regular skier.
Alongside this the snow line is retreating, not consistently every year, but trending that way, It is forcing some alpine plants to retreat further up mountains because of the advance of invasive valley plants, to a point where one day there will be nowhere further for them to retreat.
For skiers the shorter winter sports seasons have made some resorts less viable, has made ski holiday planning less predictable and has led to greater environmental damage through the increased use of snow cannon.
That is not to say resorts are not trying to improve their environmental footprint, some very successfully. But the ski industry is not a poster child for environmentalism.
Many younger people are starting to see skiing as a bad environmental choice. The Ski Club of Great Britain has an aging membership, in part symptomatic of the fact that younger generations are not as attracted to ski holidays as much as baby boomers were.
Additionally, skiers who invest a lot of money and vacation time in their passion may be increasingly frustrated by unpredictable conditions and choose other holiday options, or perhaps ski less frequently.
It will also be tough for parents whose ski holidays are determined by the school holidays of Christmas, half-term and Easter. The former and latter will see increasingly unreliable ski conditions.
As a result, I envisage a decline in the uptake of skiing from countries that do not have easy access to mountains. For the British, Brexit exacerbates this.
This will not deter skiers who live within easy reach of the slopes. They can choose which days they ski and – if the prospects are not good – they can choose to do something else.
With the increased uptake of home-working, will there be people who make a choice of living near to the slopes to work, because they can? Will people who live in countries without easy access to ski resorts consider moving to the mountains as a quality of life choice?
This demographic may not be huge, but it will be impactful. Already it can be seen in property prices in and near ski resorts. Additionally it will increase the demand for amenities such as schools, as people may decide to bring up families in the mountains.
I already see an increased uptake of high altitude skiing, of ski touring and ski mountaineering. It has a low ecological footprint and the season often embraces periods of the year where resort skiing is not viable. it has a much lower commercial and environmental impact than lift-based skiing.
The occasional skiers will still come from Milan and Munich, from Lausanne and Lyon. I don’t see this segment declining in importance but it may be increasingly responsible for large swings in demand on higher resorts. As they did in the pandemic, some ski resorts may require people to book ahead at busy periods in order to manage capacity. Hotels will offer big discounts for mid-week, off-peak rooms, and even bigger premiums for peak season in premium locations.
Lower mountain resorts may decide to entirely re-invent themselves as primarily summer destinations. Many already have more tourists in the summer than in the winter. Traditionally a lot of these resorts have closed for the Spring and Autumn, but perhaps they will in future see these periods as an opportunity to promote holidays that are often at least as attractive at these time of the year as in the summer – walking, cycling, spas and gastronomic for example.
Over the years I’ve been fortunate to ski in St Moritz several times, but it is a few years since my last visit. If you are planning a ski trip in mid-December this limits you to a handful of resorts, and – faced with that prospect – I plumped for the oldest of winter vacation destinations.
Skiing from the top of the Signal Cable Car
St Moritz sits in the heart of the Upper Engadin, a valley whose river becomes known as the Inn in Austria before flowing into the Danube. The town itself comprises a section known as Dorf and one known as Bad. It’s in a pretty setting and has a small mostly pedestrianised centre in Dorf which is characterised by a couple of very upmarket hotels and a number of luxury goods stores.
St Moritz Bahnhof
The main railway station, with its narrow gauge railway lines of the Rhaetische Bahn, connects the town to Chur, Landquart and Tirana (in Italy). The train to Tirana also stops at Celerina, which has valley runs off the main Corviglia ski area, Pontresina, with access to extensive cross-country skiing, and Diovalezza and Lagalb, which offer limited but worthwhile downhill skiing.
Looking across from Corviglia towards Corvatsch
A reliable bus service connects St Moritz Dorf with the main Signal Cable Car and the Funicular Railway for the Corviglia ski area, as well as the aforementioned ski areas, additional cross country skiing and the Corvatsch downhill slopes at Surlej.
Ovaverva
Another notable stop on the bus network is the new sports complex, Ovaverva. This comprises a number of pools, a spa, a restaurant and a cross country ski facility.
Outdoor pool at Ovaverva
One of the great things about St Moritz is there is so much to do apart from downhill skiing. The town became the first winter tourism destination in the world back in 1864, before downhill skiing became popular, and winter tourists have been able to enjoy a wide range of distractions ever since.
The famous Cresta Run
Aside from the world famous hotels such as Badrutt’s Palace, the Kempinski and the Kulm, St Moritz has a wide range of mid-priced and affordable accommodation. My favourite is the wonderful youth hostel in Bad, on the end of the #9 bus route from the station. It has a bar and a cafeteria and a wide range of rooming options – from dormitory and family rooms through to en suite.
Young ski instructors drinking outside Le White Pub as snow fell at the upmarket resort of Flaine this week were united in the condemnation of the “cult of speed”.
So reports the Times, from behind a paywall, on the reaction to recent deaths resulting from ski collisions.
Already this month there have been two high profile fatalities in the French Alps. A five-year-old British girl was killed in a what an eye witness described as a ‘high-speed’ collision whilst in ski school on a blue run above Flaine. And a famous French actor, Gaspard Ulliel, died when he collided with another skier at La Rosière.
So is skiing an inherently dangerous sport?
For many people, a lot of the pleasure of snow sports is pushing personal limits. However, this is not a solo sport. There is a duty of care to other people. I have too often seen people on the slopes who do not seem to moderate their speed sufficiently on crowded slopes. What are the guidelines?
The FIS has set explicit rules on ski slope behaviour.
They begin by stating that “a skier or snowboarder must behave in such a way that he or she does not endanger or prejudice others”. The rules go on to say that every skier or snowboarder must be in control. “He or she must adapt the speed and manner of skiing or snowboarding to his or her personal ability and to the prevailing conditions of terrain, snow and weather as well as to the density of traffic. ” Pretty explicit.
However I’ve had people tell me that ski accidents “just happen”, that they are a part of the sport. I disagree. I think a lot of skiers and snowboarders go as fast as the best conditions they can expect allow. And then the unexpected happens. There’s an icy patch. A skier ahead takes an unexpected line. A misjudged manoeuvre is taken at the limit of the skier’s competence. The decision to push your limits is a choice you can make, but not if you are sucking a stranger into sharing the consequences.
And the more people on the slopes, the higher the likelihood of a misjudgement impacting other people. I often ski at off-peak times. There is nothing more enjoyable than hurtling down a pristine slope as soon as the lifts open, with an empty piste ahead of you. But on a busy spring afternoon, I am often aghast as I see someone weave through a crowded throng of mixed ability adults and children as if there was nobody else about.
The FIS rules make clear the responsibility of the uphill skier or snowboarder to people downhill of them. “A skier or snowboarder may overtake another skier or snowboarder above or below and to the right or to the left provided that he or she leaves enough space for the overtaken skier or snowboarder to make any voluntary or involuntary movement. ” An overtaking skier should always allow for the downhill skier to do the unexpected.
To be able to ski fast on crowded slopes, some skiers choose a narrow line along the edge of the piste. I wonder if that was the circumstances of the little girl’s death? By all accounts the skier was very experienced, a local volunteer fireman. The little girl was possibly nervous about making a turn and the uphill skier may have already anticipated where he expected her to turn. I can only conjecture. But I have no doubt it was completely avoidable.
The importance of personal responsibility towards downhill skiers and snowboarders is emphasised by the FIS: ” A skier or snowboarder coming from behind must choose his or her route in such a way not to endanger skiers or snowboarders ahead “. In other words, when you overtake you need to have evaluated the situation such that you can eliminate the likelihood of collision and are sufficiently in control to complete the manoeuvre safely.
I can’t count the number of times I have seen people approach lift queues too fast and crash into the queue. Why does it happen? Usually from a failure to appreciate that the snow conditions near a lift may be different from the snow conditions on the slope above. And approaching a bunch of people far too fast.
Other FIS rules requires skiers and snowboarders to respect all signs and markings, enter or cross a marked run carefully, look behind before setting off and avoid stopping on narrow places or where there is restricted visibility. I see these rules broken all the time. I remember well my four year old daughter getting wiped out, fortunately without harm, by a skier who thought a no entry sign didn’t apply to him.
Because skiing is a sport that only requires an investment of money to participate in it, there is little opportunity to ensure there is a common understanding of the “rules of the game” or how they should be interpreted. Should they be better publicised and policed. I like that rules are not enforced in a heavy-handed way, but don’t the resorts carry a responsibility to ensure their patrons ski safely?
The Times makes some observations on addressing the dangers of the ski slopes:
There are now calls for more speed cameras and “traffic lights” to be installed on busy slopes, with complaints that high-capacity ski lifts and the construction of holiday accommodation has led to dangerous overcrowding on some pistes.
Should there be speed cameras and traffic lights? I am not so sure about speed cameras. My preference would be to have more “slow slopes” and informal controls, such as have ski instructors remind speed merchants to moderate their speed. I remember when I skied in Vail they had barriers with a spotter behind them encouraging people to slow down. That seemed to strike a reasonable balance.
Traffic lights could either be at the top of a slope or at the lifts, the latter being the most practical, even if it is somewhat of a blunt instrument. Limiting the number of ski passes issued at times of high demand would be unpopular, but effective at reducing crowds on the slopes.
There are times when some ski slopes are simply too busy to accommodate the volume of people on them, especially given the level of indiscipline and excessive speed of some skiers and snowboarders. If resorts choose to allow skiers and snowboarders to have passes issued in such number that the risk of injury in the prevailing conditions is greater, I think they carry responsibility for mitigating the consequences.
The skier who killed the little girl has now been charged with her manslaughter. I do ask myself whether the resort shares some culpability by not doing enough to create a safe environment. Is it to be considered part of the sport that excessive speed around children is acceptable?
