This toboggan run has a long history.

The famous Cresta Run at St Moritz was first built as a toboggan run several decades before downhill skiing took off as a winter sport.

Built by visiting British tourists in the mid-1880s, the run celebrates its 125th anniversary this winter.

The Cresta Run remains privately-operated by the British St. Moritz Tobogganing Club, which is based in the original St Moritz luxury hotel, The Kulm. The Club still only allows men to descend the run, except on the last day of its operation each winter, and the high speed run on a small metal sled is not for the faint-hearted. The ‘Cresta kiss’ impact injury is a common occurrence.

Continue reading ‘The run that’s older than skiing itself’

The stairs and bridge were put on Gold Hill, seen on the left.

Telluride ski resort in Colorado has airlifted a new bridge and staircase to Gold Hill on left shoulder of Palmyra Peak.

Canadian helicopter company Heliqwest airlifted two steel staircases and a bridge over the ski resort to its final resting place, the span between Gold Hill Chutes 8 and 9. The new stairway is already open for skiers.

The two sets of stairs measure 48 and 54 feet, and weigh 3304 and 3324 pounds, respectively. The bridge measures 24 feet in length and weighs 2750 pounds. All three components measure 30 inches wide, feature hand railings on both sides and serrated grated steel walking surface. Together, the stairway and bridge combine make up 126 linear feet ascending Gold Hill.

Continue reading ‘Telluride installs chute access stairway’

Revelstoke, BC, in the winter.

Revelstoke Mountain Resort has launched the new Revelstoke Outdoors Centre (ROC), which brings together the industry’s top ski and boarding pros with guiding excellence.

Programs at the British Columbia resort now include avalanche skills courses, guided backcountry/slackcountry trips, cat or heliski preparation sessions and specialty education options.

Also new this winter, Selkirk Tangiers Heli Skiing is expanding its programs to include more customized options, one of which is to fly directly from the Nelsen Lodge, at the base of the resort.

Continue reading ‘Revelstoke courting adventure skiers’

Freeskiers love any excuse to head for the Alps.

Austria’s Zell am See-Kaprun is hosting the world’s freeskiing community this weekend at the Austrian Freeski Open.

For the first time in its history the most important freeskiing event in Austria is taking place in the holiday region between the Kitzsteinhorn and Schmittenhöhe. The four day event attracted freeski celebrities like the Swedish freeskiing legend Jon Olsson, Australian Russ Henshaw, and Bobby Brown from the USA.

The professional freeskiers are competing against each other at the ‘Slopestyle Contest’ staged in the snow park on Kitzsteinhorn, attempting to win their share of US $20,000 in prize money.

Continue reading ‘Freeskiers invade Austrian Alps’

One of the world’s original ski websites, Ifyouski.com, has a brand new look after dishing £100,000 into website upgrades.

Now over 10 years old, and one of the UK’s leading snow-sport websites, ifyouski can trace its roots back to the paper publishing era and the 1993 book, ‘The Complete Skier.’ It was written by ex-British Freestyle team member and Harvard MBA Michael Liebreich who went on to set up completeskier.com, later renamed ifyouski.com.

The site has some 60,000 newsletter subscribers and 300,000 unique monthly visitors through the winter months.

Continue reading ‘One of the originals gets a facelift’

Skiers with iPhones can leave comments on apps about actual snowfall conditions.

Skiers can now stay up to date with Skiinfo’s snow reports with a new iPhone app from the snow information provider.

The new application allows users to search for snow data from more than 1500 ski resorts in Europe. It gives daily updates of snowfall, current weather, snow depth statistics, ski-lift status and comments from other users of the service. The information is also available in a choice of 10 languages, including English, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch and Polish.

Continue reading ‘Stay in the know about snow info’

Lone British rider James Stentiford at Chamonix.

The 50 best freeriders on the planet put on an amazing performance at Chamonix at the end of January at the first event of the Freeride World Tour.

They showed the 3000 cheering spectators the top of their game on the difficult face and challenging snow conditions. Against the beautiful backdrop of the Mont-Blanc, the Freeride World Tour 2010 kicked off in on the 500 metre “Pentes de l’Hôtel” face at the Brévent ski area in Chamonix-Mont-Blanc.

The Tour finally got underway perfect weather conditions at Chamonix on January 31st after heavy snow and strong winds led to the postponement of the first leg, which had been planned for 2014 Olympic venue Sochi in Russia earlier last month. Unsuitable weather also postponed the Chamonix stage by a day.

Continue reading ‘Amazing show at Chamonix for Freeride tour’