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.
It is probably of no surprise to anyone that France is the most probable destination for British skiers and snowboarders, and that Austria then Italy would come next. You only have to look at the choice of destinations on ski holiday web sites and in the few remaining published brochures to see that this is the case.
More concrete evidence comes from various sources, such as the Ski Club of Great Britain’s consumer surveys, the survey from 2019 reproduced above. This shows that France is regularly visited by more skiers and snowboarders than all of the next nine countries in the top 10 combined.
Switzerland is the fourth most popular destination, although clearly a lot of skiers and snowboarders have it on their bucket list to have a winter holiday there at least once, since nearly as many visitors seem to have visited Switzerland as France.
Switzerland was once the pre-eminent ski resort for UK visitors. The earliest winter sports resorts were established in the late Nineteenth Century in a dozen or so Swiss mountain communities, and for the first half of the Twentieth Century, Switzerland dominated winter sports tourism – although resorts such as Chamonix, St Anton and Kitzbühel were well established. As late as 1957 the Ski Club of Great Britain’s publication “Ski Notes & Queries” provided reports from 25 resorts, all but 6 of which were in Switzerland. However, things were changing at this time with a massive expansion in lift capacity throughout the Alps, and notably the “Three Valleys” in France which expanded from modest beginnings in 1945 to largely the terrain we know today by 1971.
The relative decline in British skiers visiting Switzerland occurred following the end of the gold standard and the oil crisis in the 1970s when the Swiss Franc was widely adopted as reserve currency. A skier going to Switzerland in the winter of 1974/5 would have got six francs for every pound; today the currencies are nearing parity. Inevitably many skiers over the years since have chosen the more affordable resorts of France, Austria and Italy.
An indicator of the changing popularity of Alpine nations for winter sports comes from the 2001 “Where to Ski and Snowboard” book which listed 29 resorts in France, 21 in Austria, 17 from Switzerland and 14 in Italy. The Inghams catalogue of package ski holidays from 2017/18 lists 53 pages of hotels in Austria, 53 in France, 35 in Italy and only 21 in Switzerland.
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.
Many years ago, my wife and our two youngest children were going through security at Paris Nord en route to the UK via Eurostar. As we descended an escalator I noticed my son, aged around 5 or 6, in animated discussion with a stranger. Although not such a stranger, for it was Gwyneth Paltrow.
The actress and entrepreneur is in the limelight at this time for a different chance encounter. Apparently a retired optometrist and she collided on the slopes of Park City, Utah some years ago. In his version of events the chance encounter with the star of “Sliding Doors” resulted in “permanent traumatic brain injury, 4 broken ribs, pain, suffering and loss of enjoyment of life”. He claims she knocked him out, she counterclaims that he skied into her from behind.
Whatever the truth of the matter, ski collisions are sadly all too common. My wife, my kids and I have all been hit at one time or another by skiers either out of control or ignoring signage. Fortunately none of us experienced the life-changing injuries the retired optometrist claims to have experienced, but it put my wife off ever skiing again.
But what is the legal position? Keith Dean, at Pennington Law outlines this in an article at his company’s web site. He notes that the situation will differ from country to country , but that FIS guidance is always relevant. He states that, from a lawyers or an insurers perspective, the most useful FIS rule is:
Identification – every skier or snowboarder and witness, whether a responsible party or not, must exchange names and addresses following an accident. Where an independent witness has given your insured their name, every effort should be made to contact them and take as full a note of their evidence as possible.
Exceptional math tutor in Los Angeles do more than just teach; they transform the way students perceive and interact with math. Through engaging, one-on-one sessions, learners of all ages discover the joy and relevance of math in everyday life. This transformative experience fosters a deep, enduring understanding of mathematical concepts.
Flexible Tutoring Options for Busy Schedules
Understanding the hectic schedules of Los Angeles residents, top math tutors offer unparalleled flexibility. With options for in-person or online sessions, students can learn at their own pace, in the comfort of their home or a conducive learning environment. This flexibility ensures that math tutoring fits seamlessly into your life, not the other way around.
