 Poster: A snowHead
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| agw wrote: |
| So David - you think that the SCGB missed the chance to become to British skiing what the RYA is to sailing? |
I'm sure he'll want to answer but, anyway, yes. I'm sure they could have played a major role in BAPSI (the P for professional later dropped) or even set up their own long before BAPSI got going. In 1964 The National Ski Federation (which became BSF) was set up in the same building as SCGB and they only parted company in about '87 when BSF moved out. So, with that wonderful thing called hindsight, we could have had an equivalent of the Deutscher Skiverband. But, instead, we have 7 or 8 disparate organisations - 4 home nations, BSS, BASI and, if you think they belong in there, SCGB and SCUK. So, a huge player like Germany has one and a small lowland nation like ours has many. The Dutch (also all under one roof) have over 100,000 members of their national ski fed and we have a fraction of that.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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The Dutch don't have goldsmith.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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Filthyphil30k, no but they do have Stanton. They don't appear to run a leader program, and basically just seem better organised for mass partying than us. And younger, they seem to be way younger.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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Methuselah is much younger than most SH or Skeebs.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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| Quote: |
| ...the SCGB missed the chance to become to British skiing what the RYA is to sailing? |
Perhaps, although the RYA didn't really deal with windsurfing very well, for perhaps the same reason the SCGB never really grokked snowboarding.
But sailing has some characteristics which skiing at resorts at least doesn't have. If you restrict it to off piste maybe the analogy makes more sense. But CG seems to suggest that these "leader" chaps may not in fact be qualified guides. That would not be the RYA approach...
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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| Bode Swiller wrote: |
| Filthyphil30k, no but they do have Stanton. They don't appear to run a leader program, and basically just seem better organised for mass partying than us. And younger, they seem to be way younger. |
Yup, I stayed on for a day at Val Thorens after one EOSB, and the Dutch arriving en masse seemed more youthful than we Brits, on average.
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Were they wearing clogs?
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Well they certainly clogged up the road from Moutiers. Supposedly 15,000 of them descending on one resort all at the same time.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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| philwig wrote: |
| Quote: |
| ...the SCGB missed the chance to become to British skiing what the RYA is to sailing? |
Perhaps, although the RYA didn't really deal with windsurfing very well, for perhaps the same reason the SCGB never really grokked snowboarding.
But sailing has some characteristics which skiing at resorts at least doesn't have. If you restrict it to off piste maybe the analogy makes more sense. But CG seems to suggest that these "leader" chaps may not in fact be qualified guides. That would not be the RYA approach... |
No doubt you're right, the analogy only takes you so far.
They do seem to have caught up with windsurfing, though - http://www.rya.org.uk/startboating/Pages/Windsurf.aspx
Anyway my point was more general and twofold; that the SCGB might have failed to seize the day in the early 60s but dwelling too much on that serves little purpose in 2013.
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agw, philwig, Massive difference between the RYA and 'clubs' like SCGB. The RYA is the only body accredited by HMG to administer international requirements relating to training establishments and individuals for the training and licensing of internationally-recognnised yachting qualifications ( even though not strictly required by most in the UK). I would guess most if not all its members join for that reason.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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Although quite a few people that ski also sail, I think there is a huge difference between the requirements of sailors compared to skiers.
The SCGB may have been founded in 1903 but skiing remained a very elitest sport for many years. Downhill skiing using uphill transport is often said to have begun in the 1930s when Brits, possibly ski club Brits, persuaded the authorities in Wengen to keep the mountain railway open in the winter. Then along came the war and skiing afterwards was only affordable for a small minority. It was not until the 1970s when package tourism came along that it became affordable to many more such as myself.
Even now I suspect that someone like me who usually skis three weeks or sometimes four in a season are in a small minority. The majority of Brit skiers ski just once a year.
Sailing is very different. The RYA was established in 1870 but of course we have always been a maritime nation and recreational sailing was a natural outcome of that. I am generalising but I would say that most people who sail are much more committed than those that ski. Many people who sail do so for many weekends throughout the year and can do so around our own shores.
Also anyone that has ever owned a boat or knows someone that does, will know that they seem to spend as much time working on the damned things as they do actually sailing them.
For those reasons I think sailors have a much greater need than skiers for a national organisation.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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I would never join a sailing club anyway as I know they would never want anyone from my social background.
Sailing clubs are all run by elderly wealthy toffs with posh accents and double barrelled surnames who are only in it for their own self interest.
Or am I falling for some nonsense stereotyping that I have read on the internet?
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| richjp wrote: |
I would never join a sailing club anyway as I know they would never want anyone from my social background.
Sailing clubs are all run by elderly wealthy toffs with posh accents and double barrelled surnames who are only in it for their own self interest.
Or am I falling for some nonsense stereotyping that I have read on the internet? |
Maybe on the South coast, but I do all my sailing on the Firth of Clyde and it's very much not the case.
I quite like going into the bar in the marina. The 'toffs' dressed to the nines and looking down their noses at everyone are the locals who are out for a drink in the posh place. The chaps in dirty overalls with cracked hands and a day or two of stubble, at whom the locals are looking down their noses, aren't the lackies and workers, they are the ones that could buy the place 2 or 3 times over, and they've just been working on their boat.
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You know it makes sense.
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feef, it was meant to be a joke.
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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| richjp wrote: |
| feef, it was meant to be a joke. |
Fair enough, but it's almost verbatim of the sort of thing I've had folk say to me when they take the wee wee for me having a yacht and going sailing, as if success is something to criticise.. oh yeah, we live in Britain, it is 
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Poster: A snowHead
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Blame Howards Way.
All Kentish chav / saaaaaaaaaaaaaf east Lundun accent at the sailing club my old school friends used to sail at.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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| Quote: |
they take the wee wee for me having a yacht and going sailing, as if success is something to criticise
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Yeah, he might not be successful at all. Maybe he just got lucky on 'Bullseye'.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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| richjp wrote: |
I would never join a sailing club anyway as I know they would never want anyone from my social background.
Sailing clubs are all run by elderly wealthy toffs with posh accents and double barrelled surnames who are only in it for their own self interest.
Or am I falling for some nonsense stereotyping that I have read on the internet? |
You might be right about certain sailing clubs with a "Royal" in their title but otherwise you are indeed "falling for some nonsense stereotyping". People from all walks of life enjoy sailing and join sailing clubs. You obviously need a certain amount of dosh to buy a yacht (not to mention berthing, insuring and maintaining the thing) but in my (admittedly fairly limited) experience healthy sailing clubs seem to be open and friendly places. Just like we enjoy encouraging new people to ski, sailors like to see new blood - plus those 35' yachts don't crew themselves, especially when racing. 
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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I had a meeting at the RYA a few years back and they were complaining of an ageing membership where newbies weren't joining fast enough to replace those falling overboard at the older end. Sound familiar? It's happening to most clubby organisations though - as an example, some golf clubs that were almost impossible to join are now offering incentives and immediate membership. We live in pay as you go times.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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It happens with all 'traditional' clubs. MSA and motorclubs across the UK have exactly the same issues. If you want to find out about skiing, or yachting or motorsport, your turn on the tv or Google it, you don't need to track down some pack of clique beardies in the back of a pub anymore.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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| richjp wrote: |
Although quite a few people that ski also sail, I think there is a huge difference between the requirements of sailors compared to skiers.
The SCGB may have been founded in 1903 but skiing remained a very elitest sport for many years. Downhill skiing using uphill transport is often said to have begun in the 1930s when Brits, possibly ski club Brits, persuaded the authorities in Wengen to keep the mountain railway open in the winter. |
I'm sure it must have been the 1920s, maybe DG can help us out? Was he there even?
By the early 1930s resorts such as Megeve and Davos were developing their lift systems The Col de Porte near Grenoble had a ski lift in 1934 and Pomagalski built a lift at l'Alpe d'Huez the following year. Indeed 80 years of downhill skiing at the Col de Porte this winter.
Interestingly I read this
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Lunn, convinced that there was a real need for a race designed to test a skier's ability to turn securely and rapidly on steep Alpine ground was insisting on speed being the only arbiter.
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Sounds like Arnold Lunn was the inventor of the Capa (aka Eurotest) too!
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| Bode Swiller wrote: |
| I had a meeting at the RYA a few years back and they were complaining of an ageing membership where newbies weren't joining fast enough to replace those falling overboard at the older end. Sound familiar? It's happening to most clubby organisations though - as an example, some golf clubs that were almost impossible to join are now offering incentives and immediate membership. We live in pay as you go times. |
The number of golf clubs increased massively during the boom years. Then money got tight and there were too many clubs chasing green fees.
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| George Jones wrote: |
SCGB members are not particulaly interested in internet forums either.
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How do you explain the hundreds, if not thousands, of active SCGB members who are Snowheads too (you included)? Seems like a vast generalisation without facts to support it.
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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Think clubs and forums have always been that way. Every club I'm in, every member has a login, but in reality 90% never have. More members regularly using other online services (well farcebook) for their informal banter, news, and posting pics, vids, etc., than using the club provided online services.
Obviously "clubs" like sH are different, in that the forum is the club.
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| andy wrote: |
Think clubs and forums have always been that way. Every club I'm in, every member has a login, but in reality 90% never have. More members regularly using other online services (well farcebook) for their informal banter, news, and posting pics, vids, etc., than using the club provided online services.
Obviously "clubs" like sH are different, in that the forum is the club. |
I'd agree. Of the traditional 'bricks and mortar' clubs that I've been involved in, the forums become little used, but many members will use other forums to discuss stuff with a wider audience than just their fellow members.
Clubs which started out as a forum or web community tend to be different, as you already have that wider audience, some of whom chose to become a 'member'. In SH we have super SHs as well as casual users.
Two different models that operate in different ways and, to some extent, catering for different needs of different memerbships
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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| andy wrote: |
Think clubs and forums have always been that way. Every club I'm in, every member has a login, but in reality 90% never have. More members regularly using other online services (well farcebook) for their informal banter, news, and posting pics, vids, etc., than using the club provided online services.
Obviously "clubs" like sH are different, in that the forum is the club. |
& even here (& I guess this is something admin is well aware of) there is a risk that the community take umbrage at something (probably less chance now that dillhole Phil Keith isn't involved) and migrate en masse to facebook etc. It already seems to happen with certain bits of apres referencing facebook chat and is definitely what happened to Native's community of curmudgeons.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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Duplicated
Last edited by And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports. on Wed 4-12-13 12:20; edited 1 time in total
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| richjp wrote: |
Just to explain my attempt at a "joke" earlier.
I am a reasonably satisfied member of the SCGB which I have defended against some of the wilder accusations on this board from time to time. I do not mind in engaging in intelligent discussion about the ski club of which there has been some on this thread more recently, but I object to the cheap and nasty stereotyping that a minority of Snowheads repeatedly indulge in.
I was simply trying to parody that stereotyping and I hope the majority of people who have read this thread understood that.
Perhaps I should have added a smiley so here it is.  |
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You know it makes sense.
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| richjp wrote: |
The SCGB may have been founded in 1903 but skiing remained a very elitest sport for many years. Downhill skiing using uphill transport is often said to have begun in the 1930s when Brits, possibly ski club Brits, persuaded the authorities in Wengen to keep the mountain railway open in the winter. |
| davidof wrote: |
I'm sure it must have been the 1920s, maybe DG can help us out? |
DG can help out, with a little help from the DHO, and I'm sure DGO will be along shortly too.
The second quote below, from the DHO, is particularly significant, in terms of the railway being open up to Kleine Scheidegg in 1913/4 (but perhaps not, by that stage, in winter. This would need checking). My guess is that skiers first took skis up there after the First World War - sometime between 1918 and 1921, when the racing started.
Wengen railway history ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wengen
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In the early 20th century, British tourists started ski-clubs in the area, beginning in the nearby village of Mürren. By 1903 Wengen had an Anglican Church and two years later, Sir Henry Lunn formed the Public Schools Alpine Sports Club with Wengen as a destination ski area for the members. A British Methodist minister, Lunn first visited the area to organize a meeting of Protestant churches in nearby Grindelwald where he learned about winter sports such as skiing. He returned to the area in 1896 with his son Arnold, who quickly learned to ski, and both father and son realized the potential in the future of winter sports. The club was established a few years later. Members of the Public Schools Alpine Sports Club were required to have attended an English public school or one of the "older universities" ...
The first ski races were held in the early 1920s with the British downhill championship held in 1921; the following year a ski race was held between Oxford and Cambridge. These events were the first to have downhill races as opposed to Nordic races, which were held in other Swiss resorts. In Wengen, skiers requested use of the train system for access to the slopes; for some years trains were the earliest ski-lifts in the area. Arnold Lunn used the natural terrain of the mountains for the courses; the downhill event followed the slopes above Wengen and was called the "straight down": skiers went straight down the mountain. Also during this period, Lunn invented, and introduced in Wengen, the first slalom race, in which skiers followed the terrain through the trees, replaced with ski gates in later years. These events are considered the birth of modern ski racing and Alpine skiing. |
DHO history ...
http://www.downhillonly.com/site/history.shtml
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From around the beginning of Queen Victoria’s reign, the vast majority of the visitors to the Alps were British, urged on by the painters and poets of the romantic era. Initially in the summertime only but from about 1860, winter too. Summer visitors walked and climbed the mountains and winter visitors walked, skated and tobogganed. In 1891, the first skier appeared in the Jungfrau area, Gerald Fox from Somerset. It was not until 1909/10 that the previously summer-only railway lines from Lauterbrunnen to both Wengen and Mürren opened in winter time; thus both villages became easily accessible the entire year. By 1913/14 the rail service through Wengen was open all the way up to Kleine Scheidegg.
After the first World War, skiing started again and the British, centred on Mürren and Wengen, invented and developed Downhill and Slalom ski racing. The British organised their first National Alpine Skiing championships on the Lauberhorn above Kleine Scheidegg in January 1921. This event is regarded by most ski historians as the first ever Alpine Ski Championships. |
Last edited by You know it makes sense. on Wed 4-12-13 12:39; edited 1 time in total
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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richjp ... i think you'll find most people got it
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Poster: A snowHead
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| davidof wrote: |
| Was he [DG] there even? |
No, I wasn't around in 1921. I was born in 1953 and first skied (not in Wengen - Kitzbuhel) in 1959. My father Rudy, who was born in 1925, skied in Germany as a kid. Hitler then fucked up his ski holidays for a while.
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Hitler then  up his ski holidays for a while.
Hitler ??.. did he introduce controversial gradings to ski holidays ??
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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Is that the first mention of Hitler in 67 pages?
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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Bode ... thats another one who attracted "bad publicity" !
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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Comedy Goldsmith, to me, it looks like they went back public but don't really want it public. I think they'd be better off with a Facebook group.
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Bode Swiller,
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I think they'd be better off with a Facebook group.
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The 'important' people already have a closed Facebook group
Apply to Gerry Aitken or some of the other guides for entry.
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| Comedy Goldsmith wrote: |
| ... concerns difficulties that members are having in finding the SCGB chat forum ... |
Chances are if they google it, they'll find this, and then they can go there should they feel the need.
I had a quick look and couldn't find the way in, eventually I saw it tucked into "plan your holiday" and "safe money", neither of which I'm particularly interested in doing.
"chat shat.jpg", really?
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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boredsurfin:
"Apply to Gerry Aitken or some of the other guides for entry."
Possibly best to apply in person ...
Here's where to catch up with Gerry this winter ...
... where he's strictly "not skiing on expenses", apparently.
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FAQ
