I don’t see any connection with ski restrictions and brexit, and I don’t recall the UK making such an allegation anyway (maybe it did but I never heard of it – I read the Guardian only to find links to post here 
). What we are seeing is each country making its own decisions on economic versus health grounds.
For example if I wanted to ski now and didn’t care about the risk (which is probably true for the vast majority of young people) then I could just fly airline to Geneva, CAT3 ILS, sit on a packed stuffy ski shuttle bus for a few hours, spend the evenings in bars, and not worry about it since I am unlikely to get seriously ill and even if I do catch it I am unlikely to be showing symptoms until I am safely back home 
So what stops most people in their 20s doing the above?
)The above is obvious from any casual look at UK ski forums (which tend to be horrid lynch-mob places; makes me really grateful EuroGA is like it is) anytime from roughly Feb 2020.
On a TB20 fly to ski trip, I would do it, right now, and take the 2 week sitting at home as the price, but it currently looks like for various reasons I would be doing it alone (the potential passengers don’t want to get fired, basically) so I would want to go to a place which I already know and like, and Italy is shut though December:
Ski lifts are closed over December. A new law has been passed in Italy that prohibits travel between towns and regions this Christmas. The new rules will apply across the country and ban anybody from travelling between provinces over festive period until January.
Buckerfan wrote:
I went heliskiing for a week in Turkey
I had a look at their website and it is amazing how many destinations are out there which are usually not mentally linked to skiing!
I also had a short look at European options. The more or less obvious bottom line semes to be if the helicopter just lifts people up the mountain in sight of the base costs are high but not astronomic. But as soon as any transfer to and from the actual mountain occurs cost increase significantly.
As written above in Switzerland they apparently lift you to some selected spots while in Italy they do the full thing. The tricky part is how to combine that with fixed wing travel. From LSZS apparently they fly up to the normal ski resort (without guide and apparently from 140 Euro per person) or the summit next to it and at the end of the run you can apparently join the resort. Not cheap but considering the cost of a ski pass there not that bad either.
From Courchevel things get more difficult as they apparently have to fly over to Italy to the Southern side of Mont Blanc. In Italy Aosta airport is probably the fixed wing option with the advantage that no special qualification is required compared to the others above. But again it is not right next to the mountain.
Sebastian_G wrote:
In Italy Aosta airport is probably the fixed wing option
Sebastian, there is a heliski operation right up the road from Aosta, Heliski-Valgrisenche https://www.heliski-valgrisenche.com/en/. The same people used to also do some heliskiing further south on the Italian side of the Alps.
The problem with the alpine type one day heliski operations is that (in a normal year) you need to book a long time in advance, and in a typical season only about 1 day in 3 or 4 provides good conditions.
Just got a video from here showing a ~1km queue.
With everywhere else shut, this is no surprise. One could be charitable and say that the organisers are controlling the numbers packing into the lifts but who wants to put money on this
Mostly young, half not wearing masks, and all close together
Doesn’t look good for skiing so far…
Peter wrote:
Doesn’t look good for skiing so far…
Due to an unusually high amount of employees being sent on business trips to ski resorts, the Polish government is shutting down the ski lifts and hotels on Dec 28.
Unfortunately the phone number of the person who provided the stuff they were smoking when they decided the ski lifts can be open for all but only to people traveling on business can stay at hotels is not publicly available.
The amount of snow we have here at the moment is something I have rarely seen in the past couple of years. I took this little video from the top of one of my local tour skiing spots. (start from the little ski resort of Menthieres and do the 3 summits (top of the resort, Cret de la Goutte the towards Saint Prex SPR VOR).
Took a little video which I think suits this thread well of some CAT on final ILS 04 to LSGG as well as a picture of LFHN (the runway has been cleared of snow) which is 15 mins away by car from Menthieres) But I cannot seem to upload them. @Peter I’ve just tried to send them to you not sure if there is a way for you to upload. It’s pretty funny to see someone enter the clouds on the ILS from above…
Not seen anything yet @LFHNflightstudent. You can’t upload videos to EuroGA. They need to go on Vimeo or Youtube and then you just drop in the URL into your post. If you send me a video (via dropbox or whatever) I can upload it somewhere and then drop in the link into your post.
Leaving the skiing areas open in this country clearly was madness. But no more so than the rest of the “restrictions” here or rather the exemptions.
We had record amounts of snow, therefore a stage 4 avalance warning and there is another 20-50 inches coming tomorrow.
We have Covid, in case people did not notice.
Still, the mountain resorts are totally overcrowded to the point where the police has to interfere and turn cars back.
No, people can’t go without skiing for one bloody winter and never mind there is a deadly disease and even more immediate deadly avalance danger of massive proportion around.
the mountain resorts are totally overcrowded to the point where the police has to interfere and turn cars back.
Funny; T28 posted the exact opposite, basically saying these are fake stories from the media. There was a guy here, until a few years ago, who was a ski instructor at Zermatt; might be him.
I don’t think skiing as such is unsafe from the CV19 POV. It is the management of the lift capacity, and selfish behaviour. But if a place gets busy, there won’t be enough lift capacity anyway no matter how it is managed, without allowing several per gondola, which is definitely unsafe.
If I go this winter it will probably be after I’ve had the vaccination, and only if the place is not crowded.
I didn’t say there are fake stories, but claiming that all resorts are overcrowded is like claiming the motorway is completely overcrowded because someone took a picture of a bottleneck. Sure, the one resort next to Zurich where everyone goes is overcrowded… go further afield, problem solved.
As a matter of fact the resorts will by default be less crowded than usual since there are almost no foreign tourists, and the number of daily ski passes are limited.
Zermatt, Christmas
Zinal, New Years
Lenzerheide last week
St-Mo last week
Falera today.
