Tag: mountain

Posted on

WTF is the WEF in Davos?

Are you in Davos this week for the annual World Economic Forum (WEF)? Chances are, if you are, you are one of the thousands of extra staff brought in to look after the rich and famous. Or perhaps you are one of the rich and famous?

In what is a relatively expensive country to visit, the WEF really is about the privileged few. They are in town to put the world to rights, and most have come in on private jets.

With basic membership at a cost of 68,000 Swiss francs (£55,400), you get access to general sessions of the WEF. For just under SFr 700,000 for five people you get full access – provided your number includes a token woman.

But of course most people are not in town to hear what they could read in the papers. They are here to mingle, network or to party. Or all three.

Apparently you know you are part of the in crowd if you get invited to the party thrown by Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska at his palatial chalet up the mountain from Davos. Regulars include people like Tony Blair, and you can guarantee the opportunity to hear the great and the not so good bend your ear about how issues such as inequality and the environment can get fixed. I kid you not, these are the two hottest topics at Davos.

And all this before everyone gets to go home on their private jets at nearby Dübendorf military airfield, escaping the traffic jams of chauffeur driven cars or the inconvenience of mixing with the hoi polloi on Switzerland’s immaculate railway system, burning as much fuel in one hour as a typical car does in a year.

Amongst those jetting in will be London’s mayor, a champion of public transport, who may be interested to hear that he could have got from his home in London to Davos and back entirely by train.

So what else can you do in Davos apart from put the world to rights over a glass of Dom Perignon? Well, how about ski or snowboard!
Skiers on the Parsenn above Davos
Davos is one of the very best places in the world to hit the slopes. As the Swiss Winter Sports web site puts it “Really very extensive slopes and bags of off-piste options – probably stands alongside the Engadin and the 4 Vallées as somewhere you could easily spend a whole season. Davos Dorf has access to the fabulous snow-sure Parsenn it shares with Klosters, but there is also good on and off-piste on other mountains served by the lifts from the town, for example the Jakobshorn from Davos Platz and the Rinerhorn from Glaris. In addition you can access the small areas at Pischa and Schatzalp or, from Klosters, access the Madrisa.”

After a slow start to the winter sports season, Davos has had a lot of snow in recent days, with around a metre in the town, temperatures below freezing and perfect conditions on the slopes. Expect clear, sunny skies for the forseaable future.

If you choose to visit once the problems of the world have been debated, Davos is only an hour and a quarter by train from Zurich.

Davos Parsenn - Walter Peikert 1938

Posted on

New for the 2016/17 Swiss Ski Season

Another ski season is not far away, and many Swiss resorts have been busy upgrading their facilities ready for season 2016/17.

In Zermatt the ancient gondola below the Rothorn from Gant to Blauherd is being replaced by a six-seat chairlift.
Saas-Fee in Saastal
In Saas-Fee the equally ancient gondola in the Spielboden sector is being replaced by a faster 10-seater gondola.

Andermatt continues its aggressive program of expansion. This season two T-bars will be replaced by six-seater chairlifts. In the following two seasons an additional two six-seater chairlifts and an eight-seater gondola will link the Nätschen area of Andermatt to Sedrun and open up 26km of new piste. Sedrun itself replaces a t-bar with a chairlift, a trend across many Alpine resorts.

Most people know Klosters for the Parsenn area, but the seperate Madrisa area is popular with families. Here an innovative six-seater chairlift, “Schaffürggli”, is being installed, the first of its kind in Switzerland. It features a laser scanner that uses hydraulics to adjust the height of the seat, making it much easier for children to get on and off. The chairlift will also have heated seats and can take wheelchair users up the mountain.

New lifts and replacement lifts are planned for a number of other resorts including Flumserberg, The Four Valleys, Corvatsch, Crans-Montana, Pizol, Les Diablerets, Villars-Gryon, Grüsch-Danusa and Val Müstair.

I’ve often thought it would be fun to have a drone film my descent. It would also be useful to give visitors to swisswintersports.co.uk an idea of what to expect. Well Verbier got there first and is offering Europe’s first self-tracking drones. The drones follow you on the slopes using Bluetooth and a GPS-enabled Smartphone App and Téléverbier rents them out the Hexo+ drones for CHF400 per day or CHF250 for a half day, providing assistance and a video at the end of the day.

All of the major airports in Switzerland lie just outside the Alps, but Swiss International Airlines now plan to provide a scheduled service between Sion and London, subject to a number of test flights. Sion Airport is in the heart of the Swiss Alps, and so close to the slopes you can actually see planes take off and landing from the pistes of several nearby resorts, including Verbier and Nendaz. Sion has been used for civilian flights for some time, but the last scheduled service from the UK was withdrawn a few years ago and the military will be withdrawing from using it from next year. The director of Sion airport, Aline Bovier-Gantzer says that “The initiative for the new flight is due to a collaboration with the Swiss tourism industry: Valais is already a favourite destination of British tourists during the winter months thanks to its proximity to some of Switzerland’s most popular ski resorts.”

Of course, if you fly to Switzerland, independent travellers can easily get to their resorts using the fabulous transport infrastructure available without having to resort to lengthy, uncomfortable coach transfers. You can also make the entire trip from many European cities directly by train, including London with the Eurostar ski train, booking for which is now open.
Snowboarders in the Alps
Just outside Switzerland’s borders but very popular with Swiss skiers is the Arlberg area in Austria. I remember that once you could get round the circuit that includes St Anton, Lech and Zürs, but for some years this has not been the case. Now a new gondola is scheduled to open that will link Zürs and Stuben to create the largest ski area in Austria, one of four new lifts that will be built in Ski Alberg over the summer. For the 2016/17 season this means Ski Arlberg will total 305km piste served by 87 lifts, fully linking St Anton, Stuben, St Christoph, Lech, Zürs, Schröcken and Warth.

Posted on

The World’s Most Popular Ski Resorts

Skiers in the AlpsA topic of conversation amongst most skiers and snowboarders at one time or another is which is the best ski resort in the world. Of course, there is no clear definition of what constitutes the best, but there is one man who has established which are the world’s most popular ski resorts.

Laurent Vanat publishes an epic “International Report on Snow & Mountain Tourism” every year (see http://www.vanat.ch/). This comprehensively researched report is fascinating, not least for the ranking of ski resorts.

One of the more interesting conclusions he draws this year is that winter sports are in decline in the traditional markets. Switzerland has seen almost a 20% reduction in skier days since 2004, a figure perhaps not so surprising give the strength of the Swiss Franc. However even the USA, Canada and Italy have started to slump in the last few years. Austria and France have been the major beneficiaries of people choosing alternative destinations, but even these have seen a decline in the last couple of years and have grown barely 5% in the last ten years.

The situation is mitigated by the explosive growth of skiing in China and some other emerging markets. In a separate report Laurent reports that China now has over five hundred ski resorts from a base of only a dozen twenty years ago.

Laurent attributes the relative decline of interest in winter sports, at least in part, to the failure of teaching techniques to adapt. He may have a point. Traditionally most skiers tend to give up the sport by their 60s, but the replacement rate is dictated by a number of factors. If the first experience of winter sports is unsatisfactory, it is hard to get people to give up their valuable holiday time and money to do it again. When I came through Gatwick in the middle of the ski season earlier this year I was struck by the overwhelming number of flights to and from winter sun destinations compared to ski resorts, and the demographic of the passengers reflected that an aging population is not going to benefit the winter sports industry.

Laurent’s report goes on to state that there are now around 66 countries that can be said to provide at least basic opportunities for lift-assisted, outdoor downhill skiing, around 20 others that provide indoor skiing facilities and 15 that have some snow coverage for at least some of the year and which, technically, could be skiable. By his estimate there are around 2000 ski resorts worldwide, with 35% in the Alps, 12% elsewhere in Western Europe, 21% in America, 13% in Eastern Europe and Central Asia and 19% in East Asia. China’s rise as a skiing super-power is offset in Asia by Japan’s relative decline.

Laurent uses the number of days the slopes are visited as the basis for estimating skier numbers. Only 44 resorts receive more than one million skier visits in a typical winter season and top of the list as the world’s most popular ski resort is… La Plagne! The top ten reads like this:

  1. La Plagne (France)
  2. Saalbach Hinterglemm Leogang (Austria)
  3. Skiwelt Wilder Kaiser-Brixental (Austria)
  4. Les Arcs (France)
  5. Ischgl/Samnaun Silvretta Arena (Austria/Switzerland)
  6. Whistler Blackcomb (Canada)
  7. Alta Badia (Italy)
  8. Val Thorens – Orelle (France)
  9. Vail (USA)

Somewhat surprising to me is how different this list is compared with a list of the ten most extensive ski resorts given that skiers in poll after poll rate the extent of the ski terrain as the most important single factor – see here for most extensive.

Interestingly, only 20% of resorts account for 80% of skier visits with the Alps taking in 43% of all skier visits – more than double the number of skier visits in North America.

Top world resorts in millions of skier visits
Top world resorts in millions of skier visits

Ski culture is clearly most marked in countries with extensive ski facilities, but Germany and the UK have limited ski facilities but a large ski culture. The desinations of choice for the Germans are respectively Austria, Italy and Switzerland, whilst the Brits prefer France, then Austria and Italy. The Dutch contribute about 1 million ski visits each year, and choose Austria and France as their preferred destinations.

Surprisingly, more Swiss takes their ski holidays in Austria than Brits take in Italy. It puts some perspective on how far the strong Swiss franc is hurting the domestic tourist industry. However Switzerland, along with Austria and Norway, has over a quarter of the population active in winter sports. Although it doesn’t have any resorts in the top 20 most visited, I would have little difficulty placing at least half a dozen Swiss resorts in the best 20 in the world.

Of the approximately 400 million skier visits undertaken each season, around 20 million are from visits to the 43 indoor snow centres, half of which are in Western Europe.

Blogarama - Individual Sports Blogs

Posted on

Stick it up your Jungfrau

Wilderswil - Schynige PlatteBack in Europe and picking up my car in Switzerland, which has a full set of winter tyres and my ski gear. Seems rude not to get in a few turns before I head back to the UK. A lot of snow looks to be on the way, but today promised sunshine. And so it proved.

I was tempted to try out a smaller resort, but I passed a couple on my travels around Switzerland attending to some business, and the poor snow conditions put me off. So I went for the Jungfrau. I booked into the delightful Edelweiss Lodge in Wilderswil.

Wilderswil is on the train route between Interlaken and the Jungfrau. It doesn’t have much nightlife, but the hotels are great value and accept short bookings. Train transfer is also included in the Jungfrau lift pass. There is also an interesting rail route from Wilderswil to a high plateau known as Schynige Platte, and the station in Wilderswil shares its name with the destination.

The Jungfrau is one of the world’s top ski destinations. So, after my recent trip to the USA, how does it compare with the slopes in the Americas? Firstly I would suggest that comparison is pointless – each resort has unique characteristics. If you like steep, off-piste powder, the resorts I visited in the USA had it in spades. The Jungfrau by comparison had rather crusty and generally quite tame off-piste, but it has miles of varied terrain and some of the most charming Alpine villages and restaurants, and a vibrant mountain history.

Talking of the off-piste, I ended up accidentally off-piste, following some uncharacteristically poor signage where the Wixi run was closed. Nobody else was around but it looked do-able, if steep, until I came across a sheer drop of a few hundred metres and a disconsolate individual who had made the same mistake and had sat frozen for half an hour working out what to do. We saw a feasible route down and I told him I would try it and signal when I was at the bottom. The other guy seemed rooted to where I had found him, so I alerted the lift operators. I was rather gratified when, some time later I saw him at the bottom of the off-piste section where it joined a run. Whether he walked or skied I know not.Off-piste Section above Wixi A telling reminder that the mountains can get both scary and dangerous.

It made me reflect on some fatalities in the Jungfrau. I remember some English guy falling off a cliff walking back to his hotel after a night out in Wengen. And of the climbers who perished on the North Face of the Eiger, some of whose nemesis is retold in the riveting film, Nordwand. Then there are the base jumpers who die every year in Lauterbrunnen and a couple of ski racers have died, one on the tough Lauberhorn race. It is a salutory reminder that the things we do for pleasure, reward or adventure can turn nasty in the mountains. Much as I recall of the sea.

I visited the Jungfrau on a weekend and it was busy, but not overcrowded. It is hard to tell whether Swiss exchange rates are putting people off – I heard plenty of native German, French and English accents amongst the skiers and there were plenty of Asian visitors wandering bemused amongst the skiers. However it was noteworthy that one hotel and chalet were up for sale and I baulked at making at least one purchase. However my expenses for the day were modest. My hotel with a wonderful breakfast cost me 40 francs, the lift and rail pass was 72 francs and my nourishing lunch of goulash soup with bread and wine cost less than 20 francs including a tip (a franc is about the same value as a dollar). That was all much cheaper than it would have cost me in the USA at a comparable resort.