When did your ski area last have a major expansion?

A snowHead

Planning restrictions and pressure from environmental campaigners have spoilt the fun. It's a good job that skiing wasn't invented in the 21st century. If it had been, we'd probably be still awaiting the results of the 437th round of planning appeals for the world's very first t-bar lift.

It's a similar story in North America. In Canada, Revelstoke opened for the 2008 season, and Jumbo has finally been granted approval after a 20 year (seriously) planning process. Otherwise, nada. We're stuck with what we've already got, I'm afraid.

The tree huggers have won.

A snowHead

Funny you should mention Jumbo, we were out Heli skiing in the Purcells last March and were greeted with a massive protest against it as we arrived!!! Turns out the financers and backers of the project who are European were Heli Skiing with the same operator on the day.

When we were on our own with the guide, he explained that the heli operator guides, operators & staff supported the protest & did not want the resort but they found it hard to turn down business for a group of 12 for 3 days. So they allowed the protest to go ahead. He showed us the road that was to lead to the resort and wow there is a serious amount of development needed. It was nothing but a 1 car dirt track.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

Jumbo is indeed a funny one...
What the developers seem to have overlooked is that it is in the middle of nowhere. Great heli/Cat skiing area Smile

mega-resort not so sure Sad

I can get in my truck and along with the other 2 million inhabitants of the lower mainland be in Whistler in 1.5 hours (which is of course also a downside!), or I can get in my truck, drive for 10 hours over the Coquihalla (not the best road in winter!) and along some other crazy roads that haven't just had a multi-billion dollar upgrade - I don't think so. Red and Revelstoke are great and I haven't quite managed to get round to going to them for a while even.
So I think it's more a case that there isn't a financial case for the huge capital investment required for new resorts/expansion as much as the environmental pressure
On the plus side Whistler are splashing out on some new lifts for next year - won't actually expand anything, but will make the place a bit more skiable, and my local mountain now has a high speed quad as of this year snowHead

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I kind of understand the environmental thing in the Alps, a fragile little island surrounded by a tsunami of population growth and development. There are days when looking down from the PdS you can't see Lake Geneva through the smog. Sad

. But the North American wilderness is huge. Of course there's no point developing resorts in the middle of it where no-one can get to, but allowing resort development close to the population centres doesn't threaten the rest of it.

What happens when the Alpine areas reach saturation point? Obviously spreading the load over the whole season would help, but that's not easy with the pressure to not take kids out of school. I can see the authorities, or more likely the insurance companies forcing the lift companies to cap the number of skiers on the piste; and the only way they will want to do this is by raising ticket prices until the demand matches the supply. Perhaps they could be compelled to use the huge profits this would generate to subsidise initiatives to minimise the impact of the tourist on the environment?

This implies Alpine skiing will become significantly more expensive, and hence exclusive, much like it was pre package-holiday/charter-flight. So less well off europeans would have the choice of long-haul skiing, or none at all Skullie

. Enjoy it whilst you can I suppose snowHead

, but it's a pretty gloomy prospect for our kids and grandkids...

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

Andermatt has just about managed to get planning permission for a massive expansion that causes it to lose 2km of runs...

http://www.wheretoskiandsnowboard.com/news/andermatt-expansion-begins-this-spring/

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The lift moratorium in Austria was put in place a few years ago. It didn't, and doesn't, affect planning granted before it came into force. As a result lots of Austrian resorts have planning for lifts that are not yet built: this is the case in relation to the kappl extension in St Anton for example, and also the replacement of the Stuben lifts and, ultimately, the Valfegeher / Zurs / Trittkopf gondola combination.

The Lech / Warth link has had planning for years. The problem has been a landowner over whose land the new lift runs. Lech actually own the Salober lifts already (for a small resort there are- oddly - two lift companies in warth. This is why the lifts on the Schrocken side of the mountain have seat heating and the Warth ones, like Jaegeralpe, don't). It'll take a while for the existing consents to run out, I reckon: will be interesting to see if the 'ban' is reconsidered when they do.

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After all it is free

Hmm, good point, I should have said "if". But one scenario is that the number and size of the ski areas continues to be effectively frozen at their say 1980 boundaries (and lower ones likely to close over time with accumulated snowfall proven to be declining, glaciers receding etc.). At the same time the number of skiers continues to slowly rise (EU population has risen from 680M to 740M in the last 30 years, and there's no sign of chalet and hotel construction slowing down on the ground) then if nothing else changes it would be inevitable. Perhaps widening the existing pistes and infilling will swallow the growth, or greed will change the planning structure - otherwise supply and demand will have to come into play. Possibly! Confused

glenshee got a new chairlift this season!! Albeit it just helps folks get up to the Cairnwell cafe but as other resorts are taking lifts down, Glenshee are adding more chairs.......good work from the lads in Glenshee I reckon.

Help!!

When did your ski area last have a major expansion?

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