Rated a double-black diamond and with one of the steepest angles in Eastern North America at 65%, The Beast is the newest addition to Mont Sainte Anne’s expert ski terrain. The Beast, the Quebec resort’s 66th trail, is accessible from The Beauty, another difficult glade opened just last year. Hence the pairing of Beauty and The Beast…
Mont Sainte-Anne has also added TELUS-XL, a new extreme snow park allowing restricted access to expert skier and riders only for which a safety awareness session is a pre-requisite. The snow park features extra large kink rails and boxes, 45ft table tops, a wall ride, 20ft rails and 3D boxes. Open both day and night, enjoy the adrenalin rush long after the sun goes down!
www.mont-sainte-anne.com
Speed Riding, a kind of cross between ski kiting, paragliding and skiing, will be available to try out at Le Tour in the Chamonix Valley this winter.
Participants slide “or fly” down a ski slope wearing a small ‘”wing” similar to a paragliding chute but only six-ten metres square.
The idea is not to fly too high, or for too long, but to ride the terrain like a skier, only getting much more air and feeling of much less gravity as you lift out of a turn or jump off a bump.
Speed riding was tested at the resort last year and proved successful enough for the introduction to the public this winter. The paragliding school Les Ailes du Mont-Blanc will also offer supervised speed riding on the snow park of the Grands Montets.
World Cup Calendar
Karbon wins season opener
Italy’s Denise Karbon won the opening race of the Alpine Skiing World Cup season with a giant slalom victory. Karbon improved from second place after the morning’s first run to win with a combined time of two minutes 23.21 seconds.
Continuing her comeback from a long injury lay-off, the Italian clinched only the second World Cup victory of her career by finishing 0.33 seconds ahead of American overall title contender Julia Mancuso.World Cup Results
Bulgarian Ski season opens
The World Cup ski racing schedule begins this weekend on the Rettenbach Glacier above Solden, Austria.
The season’s opening giant slalom races will take place on October 27-28 and the organising committee is working hard to deliver a grandiose anniversary event at the second try. The first attempt, at the 10th anniversary of the Audi FIS Alpine World Cup Opening in Solden last year, was literally washed away by the warm and heavy rain just days before the event, but now the weather forecast promises a significant fall in temperatures with the freezing point dropping down below 1000m of altitude as from Thursday. Continue reading ‘Ski News for Oct. 27′
Bode Miller announced today that his independent race team, comprised of himself, his coaching staff, technicians and support staff, will be called Team America. After 11-year tenure with the US Ski Team, Miller made the decision in May 2007 to ski independently. “We co-existed and had a lot of success for the past ten years and I value the relationships I made with my teammates and the staff,” stated Miller, “but I felt that this was an opportunity for me to concentrate on training and do it on my own terms. The US Ski Teams program is set up to assist 30 to 40 alpine racers each season. With Team America I will be able to solely focus on maximizing my training and race day performance, which has me super excited to get on the hill.” Continue reading ‘Miller leaves US Ski Team’
Schladming-Dachstein-Dachstein in Austria opened October 25th, a month earlier than originally planned.
This weekend sees one of the earliest non-glacier ski openings of the year, as Schladming –Dachstein prepares to open its slopes a whole month earlier than planned.
Originally the resort was set to open on 24 November, along with the other Ski amadé resorts including Salzburger Sportwelt, Gastein, Hochkönig and the Großarltal.
Just one hour from Salzburg, Ski amadé comprises five top ski regions and 25 resorts and offers unbeatable value for money.
Early snowfalls and continuing low temperatures in combination with high-end snowmaking facilities on Planai have ensured an excellent snow cover of at least 30cm (12 inches) all the way down to middle station
Twelve of the best known ski resorts in France have launched a new lift ticket option this winter, the XXL Pass.
The new ticket option is available to holders of lift passes valid five days or more from resorts in three of the world’s largest ski areas – 3 Valleys, Paradiski and Espace Killy.
Pass holders pay 10 Euros per day to be able to use their ticket from one of the three regions in one of the other two. Resorts participating include Courchevel, Meribel, La Plagne, La Tania, Les Arcs, Les Menuires, Meribel, St Martin de Belleville, Tignes, Val d’Isere and Val Thorens.
The pass replaces the under-publicised and slightly more complicated Espace Olympique pass which was launched after the 1992 and provides access to more than 1,310km (770 miles) of piste.