Winter Sports in Switzerland 1911

Sir Henry Lunn, father of Sir Arnold Lunn, the great advocate of skiing and Switzerland, wrote a chapter for the charming “A Winter Sport Book”, illustrated by Reginald Cleaver and published in 1911. Here is some of his article, and some of the illustrations.

Winter Sports in Switzerland for Englishmen orinated with Mr. John Addington Symonds at Davos, about forty years ago. At that time, with Alpine resorts, which are now crowded with devotees of various sports, were dreary solitudes in winter, deserted even by the peasants themselves. Somewhere about 1880 Grindelwald first opened its doors to a select company of Alpine Club men, and at the same time St. Moritz began to be frequented. On Christmas Day, 1891, in what was called the Little Bear, which had been erected as a winter house, one hundred people sat down to dinner. This was supposed to be a wonderful record in Grindelwald. Rates then were low and so were numbers. One could get accommodation in those days for about seven francs a day , where now the figure would be from twenty to twenty-five francs a day. At St. Moritz, I have met people who stayed at the Kulm in those early days for five francs a day. It would be difficult to get in there now for less than twenty francs, while many people pay thirty francs and more.

The number of beds now available at Grindelwald and St. Moritz in winter are given in the Swiss winter book.

On 6th January 1892 I went with a small party of readers of the Review of the Churches to Grindelwald, as the two vessels on which we were going to Norway had been wrecked, and we had some Reunion talks, which Jed to the Reunion Conferences later, which took place in three successive years. This was the beginning of my visiting Switzerland. At that time I believe the only winter resorts open were Grindelwald, Davos, and St. Moritz, which were all in their infancy as winter resorts. A little later came the opening of Arosa, another lung resort, as a rival to Davos ; The opening of Caux in the Rhone Va11ey; a few years later Chateau d’Oeux; and meanwhile St. Moritz was going ahead by 1eaps and bounds.

The real development of Winter Sports dates however – I think I am correct in saying, from 1902, when the first party of Etonians and Harrovians went to Adelboden. I had visited that place and found that the proprietor had made an attempt to open, the previous year, with about twenty visitors. Mr. John Stogdon of Harrow wrote a letter which sent out in facsimile to old Etonians and Harrovians, saying that the Grand Hotel at Adelboden had been reserved especially for them. That winter Sir Walter Parratt, Sir Richard, Jebb, the Bishop of Wakefield, the Bishop of Hereford, and a number of other well-known people went to Adelboden. We had four hundred visitors in all, and the centre has never looked back since – although, from my standpoint, “Every prospect pleases and only man is vile,” as the hotel-keepers broke their contracts with me, and I had to give up the place.

In December 1905 the Public Schools Winter Sports Club, which had sprung into being during that year, opened four new centres – Montana, which has ever since remained the favourite of the Club; Villars-sur-Ollon, which is also a great favourite, and has a magnificent rink; Celerina, which the Club never took to for some reason; and Klosters, below Davos, which did not succeed because people thought it was too near a consumptive resort, though this was a complete delusion, as the microbes would have had a harder journey to reach Klosters from Davos than the Israelites undertook when they set out from Egypt for the Promised Land; but the idea had done a good deal to hinder the development of the place.

The Public Schools Alpine Sports Club that year numbered about four hundred and forty members; it now has just about ten times that number.

In later seasons the Public Schools Alpine Sports Club has opened the following centres: Mürren, Wengen, Beatenberg, and has joined in the development of Lenzerheide.

In 1892, when I first went to Switzerland in winter, I think I am right in saying that the total number of beds in hotels for sport, as opposed to invalid resorts, was not more than three or four hundred. The Winter Sports Year Book will give you the actual number; but I believe that in round numbers there are now about ten thousand.

One fact of interest is the way in which the other nations are gradually following the lead of Englishmen. In the early days of which I have spoken, up to the end of the century, visitors to Swiss winter resorts were almost exclusively English, with the possible exception of St. Moritz. But within the last few years, Germans have come in considerable numbers to Grindelwald, Engelberg, and Caux us well as to St. Moritz. The Public School resorts are, of course, exclusively English. This tendency on the part of the leading Continental nations has been greatly promoted by the presence of members of their Ryal families at St. Moritz. One year the Crown Prince of Germany, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, and one or two other heirs to European thrones were staying at that centre.

In matters of sport and social intercourse our nobility generally lead and the rest follow; but as regards Alpine sport the case has been reversed. The Alpine Club draws its members chiefly from the educated middle-class, and it is this class that forms the largest proportion of English visitors to Switzerland in winter, though their example, as has been seen, is being followed even by crown princes.

With reference to the question of sports, skating, of course, has been the great feature in English centres. The English style of skating was practised exclusively at Davos and Grindelwald, and almost exclusively at St. Moritz. Gradually the International or Continental style is driving out English skating from Davos and Grindelwald, and possibly from St. Moritz. The reasons for this are twofold. (1) The International style of skating takes up so little room. Two International skaters can waltz on a piece of ice of 400 square feet, whereas English skaters for a figure of four would require about 60 feet square or 3600 square feet. Hotel proprietors, of course, prefer that style of skating which takes up least ice room. (2) Continental skating is much attractive as a spectacle than the English style. I think I have told you of a remark which Elizabeth Asquith made about the two kindsof skating. Her mother said the Continental skater thought he was making an epigram and only made a conundrum. Elizabeth said, ” I think the English skater makes a platitude.” The two schools of skating regard one another almost as the Orangemen and Roman Catholics do in the north of Ireland.

Curling twenty years ago was almost a dead letter in Switzerland.One saw the stone lying idly, day by day, and occasionally a few energetic Scotsmen would send a stone down the ice ; but one might pass the winter in Switzerland without once seeing a real curling match.

In January 1905 I offered a cup for an International Curling Match at Kandersteg, and nearly a hundred Scotsmen came all the way from their native land, bringing with them about three tons of Caledonian granite in curling-stones. In some cases they took them into their sleeping-cars, they valued them so much. This gave a great fillip to the game in Switzerland, and directed the attention of the Scottish curling world to Switzerland. Every year since then the International curling match has been held at some Swiss centre, and Englishmen have taken up curling in Switzerland with an enthusiasm almost equal to that with which they have taken up golf in their own country.

Ski-ing was unknown in Switzerland till about 1895. The first person I ever saw ski-ing in Switzerland was Conan Doyle, at Davos, and he had, of course, brought the art from Norway. He was one of the earliest ski-runners. Now every postman delivers his letters on ski in the winter, and little children untwist the hoops from barrels and make themselves embryo ski. There are two English Ski Clubs and endless Swiss and German societies. The two English Clubs are (1) the Alpine Ski Club, which exists to promote mountaineering on ski, and has rather a stifftest of membership on the lines of the Alpine Club, and (2) the Ski Club of Great Britain, which admits men and women, and has no severe requirements for entrance, but welcomes on a broad basis all who are interested in skiing.

Tobogganing, since ski-ing became so popular, has rather gone out of fashion. St. Moritz, maintains at great expense one ice-run, the Cresta, of world-wide fame, down which tobogganers come at the rate of from sixty to seventy miles an hour, but the total number of those who come down the whole length of the run, which is nearly a mile long, is less than twenty during the year, and there are probably from ten thousand to twenty thousand visitors at St. Moritz during the wi11t r, o it is obvious that tobogganing only attracts few votaries. The old German schlitten, or wooden toboggans, were used by good walkers, who would go up to the top of a mountain pass, lunch there, rest an hour in the sunshine, and come down on the toboggan. But now the toboggan is forsaken for the ski, which answer the same purpose much more effectively.

St. Moritz has developed a rather expensive sport known as ski-jöring, which is practised at no other place in Switzerland, and which requires a frozen lake or river for its exercise. In this sport a ski-runner is drawn over the ice by two horses, which he drives himself, at full gallop. The sport is very exciting to watch. Race-horses are brought from Berlin and Vienna, and the expense is, of course, prohibitive except for the wealthiest sportsmen.

The bob-sleigh is really a bogie-carriage composed of two toboggans with a seat run right across the two, each toboggan being movable on its own axis, and it furnishes acommodation for four, six, or eight persons. lt is a deadly weapon of destruction, and hasa great many accidents to its credit. Th pace attained on this fearsome instrument is tremendous, but where, as at St. Moritz, there is an ice-run carefully prepared and reserved for bob-sleighing, which ss notpermitted elsewhere, the danger is confined to those taking part in the sport. In some centres the public roads are used, to the peril both or (the bob-sleighers and of the passers-by. However, no danger will deter an Englishman from practising his favourite sport, and bob-sleighing has a number of votaries in nearly all the centres.

25/11/202125/11/2021

Inghams recommend Switzerland for skiing

With covid in mind, Inghams, the leading ski holiday operator, have recommended Switzerland as a good choice for a ski holiday this season, singling out Davos, Grindelwald, Klosters, Murren, Saas Fee, St Moritz, Wengen and Zermatt.

Everyone should know that Switzerland is probably the best country in the world to visit for a ski holiday, but the strength of the Swiss Franc has put increasing numbers of cost-conscious tourists off in recent years. However Switzerland has uniquely been able to maintain ski facilities throughout the pandemic, and continue to look like the most likely destination to guarantee a great ski experience this winter.

Details of Ingham holidays are at Inghams web site. Additionally they have a really good Coronavirus hub, letting you know what coronavirus restrictions apply in all of the destinations they serve.

23/05/202131/05/2021

Swiss Winter Sports in 1925

Although I have been skiing for over 50 years, I don’t have a great sense of it changing much since I first tumbled down a Scottish mountain. OK, we did wear some uncool ski outfits back then, nobody snowboarded and there were a higher proportion of surface lifts. But I don’t remember it being so different. Largely the same resorts and the same vibe in them.

Track back another 50 years, and what was often called ski running involved very long wooden skis, one stick and a pair of stout leather ski boots. And it was by no means the major attraction for people visiting the Alps in winter.

I’ve been reading “Things Seen in Switzerland in Winter”, written by Charles Domville-Fife in 1925. He writes that interest in visiting Switzerland was divided between those for whom it was termed “The Playground of Europe”, and those who went hoping to recover from tubercolosis.

Until 1946 there was no effective medication to treat tubercolosis, a disease that killed as many as one in four people in England in the 19th Century. Swiss mountain air and sunshine achieved a remarkable recovery rate in the clinics that sprung up in hitherto sleepy hamlets like Davos and Arosa in the late nineteenth century. And the therapeutic benefits were enjoyed as much, or even more, in the winter.

St Moritz had also become a popular destination for its winter sun and the many diversions organised in the sophisticated hotels there – the hotelier Badrutt taking a lot of credit for popularising winter holidays in the Engadine. In 1873 for the first time St Moritz recorded more winter visitors than summer ones.

One English visitor to Switzerland in the late nineteenth century was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who stayed in Davos where his wife was recuperating from tuberculosis. Ever impatient to be doing something, he imported some skis from Norway (where skiing had long been a practical means of transport) and became the first person to ski from Davos to Arosa – still a popular back country route. In 1893 he wrote an article in the English press of his experiences and helped popularise what was to diverge from Norwegian ski techniques to become what we now know as the sport of downhill skiing.

Skiing was by no means the only winter sport that became popular in Switzerland. Domville-Fife records that skating was introduced as a winter sport in 1876 (from England), curling (from Scotland) in 1882, tobogganing (from Canada) in 1884, ice hockey (also from Canada) in 1992 and the quaint sport of skijoring (from Scandinavia) in 1906.

In the second half of the nineteenth century Switzerland benefitted from a growing electrified rail system, opening up destinations such as the new sanatoria in Montana and Leysin, and new winter sports destinations like Klosters, Celerina, Grindelwald, Wengen, Murren, Gstaad, Villars, Engelberg and Andermatt. Adelboden later emerged as both a health centre and a ski destination, with the world’s first winter sports holiday package organised by Sir Henry Lunn in 1903. Outside of Switzerland, Chamonix and St Anton – both with rail links – were early adopters of sport skiing, St Anton claiming to have founded the first ski club in 1901.

Skiers demonstrate Telemark, Jump Turn and Christiana in St Moritz 1925

Most of the new winter sports were introduced by the British, but soon became popular with the Swiss and visiting Germans. The opening of the cog railways in winter in Grindelwald, Wengen and Villars are attributed to British requests that they be available outside the summer timetable.

It’s noteworthy that, at this time, British tourists tended to come over only in December and January, and what we now largely associate with the peak winter sports period was left to the locals. Domville-Fife declares that “at nearly all the best known resorts the predominance of British people during Christmas and New Year festivities is usually so great that even the Swiss themselves are scarcely seen. It is during this period and for about five weeks afterwards that a sojourn at any of the winter sports centres becomes one of the most delightful experiences of life”.

Domville-Fife, writing in 1925, doesn’t mention a single ski destination in the canton of Valais, now probably the pre-eminent ski region in the world. Champéry, in the Portes du Soleil did not have its first lift access to the slopes until 1939, Verbier’s first lift arrived in 1946, Saas-Fee a popular summer spa destination did not have road access until 1950 and Zermatt, although it has had the Gornergrat cog railway since 1898, was primarily known as a summer destination for climbers, and did not open the railway to the summit during the winter season until 1941. Only Montana (later Crans-Montana), had adopted skiing by 1925, following the opening of the funicular railway in 1911. However the village was still mostly popular for its sanatoria and, from 1906, for golfing.

Skijoring, meanwhile, has its adherents but has achieved only a limited popularity. Although my Swiss mother-in-law recalls skiing to school on skis, I don’t think it looks anything like this today at Aiglon College!

21/12/202030/08/2022

Best Ski Resorts in Switzerland

Benefits of Skiing

For some, the first sign of snow means it is time to dig out the wool socks and blankets and go into hibernation. For others, though, it means time to wax those skis and hit the slopes! Skiing is an incredible sport that involves physical, mental, social and emotional aspects of wellness. Often times winter can bring people into a depression called Seasonal Affective Disorder (S.A.D.). Skiing combines the great outdoor air with physical activity and some sunshine exposure that many people forget about. Read more about exipure.

The physical aspect is obvious, however many individuals, especially those that have never skied before, may not realize how much brain power goes into the sport. Skiing is a proprioceptive activity. Proprioception is an aspect of fitness that is defined as one’s ability to feel the position of different body parts and the effort that goes into moving them. This is almost defines skiing because skiing involves quite a bit of balance and coordination. There are so many slight movements and positions of your body that you must be conscious of to ski well. The more you ski the more you strengthen your ability to be aware of the movement of your body parts. This is important because proprioception weakens with age so the more you are involved in proprioceptive activities the less it will diminish. Check these ikaria lean belly juice reviews.

Skiing prevents aging in more ways than that though. When you ski you carry the weight of your entire body on your feet. Your knees are the joints that endure that weight and must be able to move quickly despite it, so they are being strengthened when you ski. Great news for those that have been skiing for many years; you’ve been strengthening those joints and making an injury later in life less likely the whole time. In addition to strengthening your knees your bones become stronger as well because skiing is a weight bearing activity. So not only are you having a fantastic time gliding down the slopes, but you are preventing knee damage, osteoporosis and increasing your proprioceptive strength. Skiing is also a great way to get some moderate aerobic activity into your day. For most people, skiing is an all day event, so you can imagine the workout your heart is getting without you even becoming winded. This is how phenq works.

It is hardly necessary to mention the social aspect of skiing, but I will for that sake of those that have never been. Waking up at the crack of down to drive an hour or two to spend a day in the freezing cold may not seem appealing to a “winter hibernator.” Add a whole group of close friends that all share the same love for skiing, and you’ve got one heck of a good day. What is unique about skiing is that it brings together people of all different ages and cultures. All over the world if there are mountains and snow, there will be people skiing. So not only do you have a great group of people having a fantastic time; you’ve got a motivational team that encourages you to get off the couch in the winter and get your heart pumping all day! Try something new this winter instead of being miserable when the first snow falls. If you are already an avid skier, bring someone that isn’t and show them how much fun they are missing!