Weekly snow news roundup – 15/06/2009
THIS WEEK’S HEADLINES
Whistler’s Blackcomb 7,000 Year Old Glacier “Shrank By Half in Past Century”
Australia’s Ski Areas Get Snow
Wind Turbine Planned For Second New England Resort
Spectacular New Bridge for Bad Gastein
Copper Gets Solar
Lenzerheide To Unveil New 20m Swiss Franc Wellness Centre
US Supreme Court Rejects Legal Action Against Ski Area Planning to Make Snow From Wastewater
FIS Launch SnowKidz Campaign
Park City Reports Large Drop In Visitor Spending
Snow Hunter Weekly World Snow Resort News Publishes 5,000th Story
Whistler’s Blackcomb 7,000 Year Old Glacier “Shrank By Half in Past Century”
A report in Canada’s Globe & Mail newspaper says that the 7,000-year-old Horstman Glacier has lost half its volume in the past century, and that the rate of melt has accelerated in the past decade with more than 10 per cent lost since 1999.
The glacier which re-opens for summer ski and boarding later this month, has not decreased much in surface area, the globe & Mail reports, but has lost a lot of its thickness.
“It’s not so much less snow in the winter, it’s warmer temperatures in the summer, that’s what’s eating away at it most,” Arthur De Jong, a mountain planner at Whistler-Blackcomb told the paper. “It clearly shows the climate is warming.”
Mr De Jong is guiding a new climate change/mountain environment tour in August and September, in which he explains glaciology.
Whistler is reported to be considering trying to grow the glacier again by protecting the remaining ice and adding to it with snowmaking, the summer snowsports business is worth approximately $1m to the resort, the Globe Mail says.
Australia’s Ski Areas Get Snow
Several of Australia’s ski areas opened with little or no snow on June 5th/6th, but that has all changed in the past week with snow falling at most centres, leading to excellent early –season conditions.
Perisher opened its Mt Perisher ski slopes last week reporting conditions for this early in the season, “the best in a decade.”
The resort had received 58cm (almost two feet) of fresh snow since Sunday 7 June and thanks also to Perisher’s $19 million snowmaking expansion, Saturday 13 June saw Towers Run on Mt Perisher open for skiing and boarding.
Ten lifts are currently operating across Perisher Valley and Smiggin Holes and the PlayStation Slopestyle course on Front Valley now contains a 20-foot table top in addition to other impressive features.
“There is a nice light, dry cover of snow on the slopes and with more snow expected over the coming days, lowering to 1500m.” said a resort spokesperson (Perisher village sits at 1720m).
At a second Australian resort, Mt Buller, the Skyline terrain park and half pipe open for the first time this season at the weekend.
“For those who prefer the corduroy, groomer’s pick of the day is Shakey Knees.” said a resort spokesperson.
Wind Turbine Planned For Second New England Resort
New Hampshire’s Jiminy Peak Mountain Resort was the first ski area to erect a wind turbine, one of the largest ever built by a private company, but now a second New England ski resort will construct a big turbine to generate power itself.
The smaller Berkshire East ski area will built a smaller windmill generating 600-kilowatts instead of the 1.5 megawatts generated by Jiminy Peak, producing power to meet a third of its energy needs.
The windmill should be operational by the end of 2009 and has recently been awarded a $400,000 dollar state grant towards the project costs,
James Schaefer, co-owner of Berkshire East and a managing director for the Swiss UBS bank said the decision to invest in wind power was to help future proof the area against rising energy costs, saying that the area’s main energy needs were for snowmaking.
Spectacular New Bridge for Bad Gastein
Bad Gastein is currently building a spectacular 140m long ‘hanging bridge’ from the summit station of the Stubnerkogel lift to the Sender.
At the northern end of the bridge a footbridge leads from the existing hiking trail to the hanging bridge, which is anchored to the solid rock. At the southern end of the bridge there will be a connection to the terrace of the existing summit restaurant.
The floor covering grid and the rails of the bridge will be made of transparent mesh that is aesthetically designed to give a ‛light’ construction. The design does not interfere with the terrain and allows those on foot to experience the altitude difference first hand.
The new hanging bridge will open at the start of next season in December.
Copper’s first solar project has been installed and is producing power. Photovoltaic panels now line the south-facing roof of the Colorado ski resort’s Transportation Center located in the Alpine Lot. The 4.2 kilowatt solar system will provide a portion of the electricity for the building.
“This project demonstrates Copper’s support of renewable energy and is a visible part of Copper’s overall energy strategy to reduce our carbon footprint and support renewable energies for the future.” Said a company statement.
Copper have also introduced carpooling incentives for guests arriving with four or more people in their vehicle.
Lenzerheide To Unveil New 20m Swiss Franc Wellness Centre
Lenzerheide in Switzerland will unveil one of the biggest and best wellness centres in the Alps this winter.
Along with the biggest hotel hammam in the Alps located at Hotel Schweizerhof, the H2Lai wellness pool will guarantee further exhilaration after exciting hours on the snow.
Roughly 20 million Swiss Francs have been invested in construction work that has taken two years.
Guests will now be able to enjoy a permanently heated outdoor swimming pool (35 degrees), with massage couch and body spray shower, as well as a lavishly appointed sauna and wellness facility with rooftop sun deck.
The new wading pool and the extended slide will provide guarantee amusement for the resort’s youngest guests.
www.lenzerheide.com/wellnessbad
US Supreme Court Rejects Legal Action Against Ski Area Planning to Make Snow From Wastewater
The Supreme Court in the US has rejected an appeal by a number of native American tribes that want to stop Arizona Snowbowl ski area from making snow from recycled and purified waste water to use on the ski slopes which the tribes say are sacred lands.
The plans have been mooted for the best part of a decade and have been considered by various lower courts which have alternately decided in favour of the ski area and of the tribes. Last summer the Federal courts came down in favour of the ski resort, leading to the attempt to bring the case to the supreme court.
The ski resort argues that the purified waste water is actually cleaner than normal tap water. It is already widely used in the state on agricultural land, golf courses and school playing fields and snow has been made from wastewater at other US resorts, including Killington, and in Australia. In the latter case it has been heralded as a much environmentally friendly achievement. However the indigenous tribes believe that the using purified waste water to make snow is essentially the same as dumping sewage on their sacred land.
The Supreme Court decided not to allow the action and to allow the last legal result in the lower court in favour of Arizona Snowbowl to stand. They decided that as the ski area is based on US National Forest rather than tribally owned land it was up to the state to decide how the land is used.
Arizona Snowbowl say they have no plans to introduce waste water snowmaking for the coming season.
The International Ski Federation has launched a campaign to help get more children around the world in to snow sports.
Their ‘Bring Children to the Snow’ – SnowKidz – is aimed at children aged 4-14, and their parents. The campaign uses some ‘approachable super heroes’ figures who take care of children and youngsters anywhere in the snow, all around the world.
The super heroes help motivate children on to the slopes and can also help reduce fears, anxieties or obstacles in children’s minds connected with snow or snow activities.
In addition to recognize and promote the best examples of bringing children to the snow in varying national campaigns, the FIS has launched a new FIS SnowKidz Award.
The various FIS Member National Ski Associations (full and associate members) have been invited to submit their projects to compete for the first award for the best examples of bringing children to the snow.
The Award will be presented at the 47th International Ski Congress in Antalya (Turkey) in 2010. The submissions are due by 31st January 2010. The award will be presented every second year at the International Ski Congress.
www.fis-snowkidz.com
Park City Reports Large Drop In Visitor Spending
Year-round tourism destination Park City in Utah has reported a large decline in business over the past nine months.
The average fall in business was 22.5% last winter but the ski town’s City Hall, which derived the results from declining tax revenues, reported that business had been on the decline since at least July 2008.
March saw the worst figures with business down a full third on March 2008.
City Hall said the decline was in line with expectations and they now expected a gradual recovery through the remainder of 2009.
Snow Hunter Weekly World Snow Resort News Publishes 5,000th Story
Patrick Thorne has written his 5,000th ski news story for his weekly Snow Hunter World Snow News service which began appearing nearly 11 years ago. It’s this one.
The service began when Patrick was first commissioned to produce ten stories a month through autumn and winter 2008-9 by early ski website, 1ski.com, then owned by EMAP and later absorbed in to the IfYouSki.com site, now part of Ski Solutions, which still publishes some of the stories.
However just as 1ski disappeared, other websites and ski magazines expressed a desire to receive regular news and the service went fortnightly, then weekly, year round, and hasn’t stopped since.
It is now emailed direct to thousands of recipients each week, including ski media and ski industry worldwide, and appears on ski and travel websites all around the planet.
As a ski writer, some of the commonest questions I’m asked are, “What do you do in the summer?” and “Where do you find all the stories?” said Patrick, “The truth is I’m probably busier in the summer and autumn than the winter, preparing material for the coming season and the news certainly never stops. The issue these days is trying to identify the interesting stories amongst all the information out there, I try to do that and I hope that’s why people still value the service.”
So far Patrick, who has been a full time ski writer for 25 years, remains motivated to continue the service and has no plans to quit.
“It can occasionally feel a bit of a bind producing the news week in, week out, year round,” he said, “I keep thinking I’ll get bored with it one day, but so far I am always fascinated each week by the new stories that emerge and I still enjoy compiling the weekly digest. Besides that, if I’m ever late with the news about 50 people email in asking me where it is, so it is nice to know people expect to receive it!”
Over the 11 years it has been appearing the news (early versions of which were sent out by fax) has moved from state-of-the-art to a rather dated format now of a simple Word attachment.
“I’m always being advised to get with the times and set up an RSS feed or publish the news as a web page or pdf document,” said Patrick, “But when I’ve tried that other people have complained they liked it the old way. I suppose I might change it one day but for now, if it ain’t broke…”
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