Alpine – Page 10 – Alpine Winter Sports

26/10/201426/10/2014

New Alpine Superpass for Vaud and Bern

Superpass for Adelobden-Lenk, Gstaad Mountain Rides and the Alpes Vaudois
A new pass is on offer this season, covering the major resorts in the Bernese Oberland and Vaud. The Superpass allows you to ski Gstaad Mountain Rides, Adelboden-Lenk and the Alpes Vaudois (which includes Leysin, Villars and Les Diablerets). That’s 188 lifts and 630km of piste, and includes runs as high as 3000m at Glacier3000 (and, incidentally, Glacier3000 has opened up a new walkway between a couple of peaks for a spectacular panorama view from this season). The prices are as follows:

Consecutive days	Full-price for Adults	Youths (1991-1998) & Seniors (m: 1949, f: 1950)	Children (1999-2005)
4	CHF 242.-	CHF 219.-	CHF 143.-
5	CHF 290.-	CHF 262.-	CHF 173.-
6	CHF 333.-	CHF 301.-	CHF 202.-
7	CHF 377.-	CHF 341.-	CHF 228.-
8	CHF 421.-	CHF 380.-	CHF 252.-
9	CHF 456.-	CHF 413.-	CHF 274.-
10	CHF 488.-	CHF 441.-	CHF 294.-
11	CHF 517.-	CHF 467.-	CHF 311.-
12	CHF 542.-	CHF 489.-	CHF 327.-
13	CHF 565.-	CHF 510.-	CHF 341.-
14	CHF 585.-	CHF 528.-	CHF 354.-
15	CHF 605.-	CHF 546.-	CHF 365.-

23/09/201404/10/2014

The Birdman Flies No Longer

The Jungfrau Winter Sports Region
Alpine Sports always carry an element of risk, none more so than base jumping, where people throw themselves off the tops of mountains and other high altitude platforms wearing an outfit called a wingsuit. This week that risk was brought to the home of Alpinism.

Ramón Rojas, known as the Birdman for his daring base jumps, has died while flying using a wingsuit in the Jungfrau.

Ramon was a 35 year old Chilean-born professional base jumper who only last month broke the world record for the highest base jump in history, from 4100m in Cerro El Plomo, Chile.

Apparently he was in training in strong winds for a competition in Lauterbrunnen when he died.

A Facebook page has been set up called “Ramon Rojas memorial to celebrate his awesome life”. His sister, Paula Rojas, writes: “My heart is broken but it gives me peace to know that my brother was happy doing what he loved so passionately. He was happy and will carry on smiling from where he is, with the rest of the birds.”

15/01/201407/01/2015

Ski by Train

I have just launched a new web site – really an extension of my existing ski site www.swisswintersports.co.uk – that specifically focuses on Alpine resorts you can get to by train. The site is at www.snowandrail.com, and is based largely on my own experiences. The focus is still mainly Switzerland, just because the rail network is so much more extensive and efficient in Switzerland, but there are a number of Austrian resorts included and even three French resorts.

The scope currently is only resorts with a railway station in the resort – or a cable car link from a railway station to the resort. In time I might extend or repackage the site to include places where there are scheduled bus services from a nearby railway station, or even (as is often the case in France) the need to take a taxi for the last leg.

If any readers of this blog have some experience of resorts that they got to be railway that are not covered in the site, or know of good accommodation near the station, please let me know.

In the meantime, I need to do more research! Where are those skis…

28/12/201307/01/2015

The Cutest Village Ski Resorts

Zermatt
The Daily Telegraph has just identified what it thinks are the 15 cutest village ski resorts, and I have to disagree with their choice. For instance, Zermatt “cute”? Hardly. Car-free, rocking, beautiful, busy… but cute? And hardly a village. In my opinion most of the cutest villages have limited pistes and antiquated lifts – which is maybe how they tend to stay cute.

Anyway, for what it’s worth, here’s my list of villages in Switzerland that are both cute and have access to plenty of the white stuff, in no particular order (click on the links for more info):

Adelboden

Gstaad
Gstaad
Mürren
Muerren
Wengen
Wengen
Andermatt

Stoos
Stoos
Briel (Brigels)
Brigels
Celerina

Klosters

Lenzerheide

Pontresina

Samnaun
Samnaun
Silvaplana

Les Diablerets

Champéry
Champery
Saas-Fee

St Luc/Chandolin
St Luc
Grimentz