Chalet 1802 - Chamonix-Mont-Blanc

Fancy a family skiing holiday in 2012? With the best ski resorts increasingly realising that skiers of all ages enjoy hitting the slopes, family ski holidays are becoming more and more accessible. Some keen skiers are now as young as three years of age, and are seen heading out to the lift with their parents for a skiing session. This confidence is due to the high quality of the instruction that is now available for children.  Families are further encouraged by some great entertainment that is provided for all ages at the resorts.  Childcare provision is also available at some of the top ski resorts, allowing parents to have some quality time on their own during the evenings.

1. Snowshoe Mountain, in West Virginia, is one of the top skiing destinations in the world. Not only will you find some of the best skiing conditions available; excellent accommodation for luxury holidays can be enjoyed in the platinum suites. Besides fresh powder and slopes perfect for every skill level, the activities include tubing, snowmobiles, terrain parks and even a Big Top carnival for hours of warm indoor fun.

2. Aussois, in France’s Maurienne Valley, offers not only skiing, but also a beautiful village, featuring attractive slate and stone-built houses and activities that appeal to the whole family. In addition to skiing, wildlife safari snowshoeing and sledging on inflatables will entertain children and adults alike.

3. Switzerland’s Veysonnaz in the 4 Valleys area offers the gentlest slopes nearest to the lodges, making it easy for parents of young children to keep an eye on the smaller skiers, while more experienced snow-lovers will want to head to the higher slopes for a stiffer challenge.

4. The resort in the Dolomites in Val Gardena, Italy, welcomes children to a family oriented resort tailored to a family’s slower pace. For more experienced skiers, Val Gardena is part of Dolomiti Superski, providing more options to challenge stronger skiers.

5. Les Gets, France is a picturesque resort with some unusual activities available, including paragliding and dogsledding! Friendly, caring day-care facilities are available for those too small for the slopes, and older children will be thrilled with Les Gets’ gentle beginner to intermediate slopes.

6. Snowmass, in Colorado is Aspen skiing at its best. Fancy an overnight adventure, camping in the mountain wilderness? Snowmass is the place for you. As well as guided overnight camping, Snowmass offers mountain biking, paintballing, fishing and many other activities that are sure to appeal to the entire family.

7. Northstar, in Lake Tahoe, makes our top-ten list with its live music, ice skating and, for the more adventurous tourist, bungee jumping. Geocaching has become popular in recent years in the United States. Geocaches’ visit websites, where coordinates of a hiding place are revealed. They then follow the directions to locate hidden “buried treasures” left by other enthusiasts.

8. Badrutt’s Palace is one of St. Moritz’s most attractive locations for families with children. Whether your offspring is a toddler or is in the upper grades, there’s an activity to keep them entertained. The trained staff members are child-friendly and the children are even welcomed with a gift.

9. A Husky dog park, a goat farm and a treetop playground adventure make Les Houches in the Chamonix Valley one of the top ten family-friendly resorts. Oh, yes, and the skiing is also excellent.

10. Finally, Breckenridge, Colorado rounds out our top-ten countdown with its classically luxurious resort which has had 50 years to perfect its catering for families.

Should you or should you not wear a ski helmet when skiing?

Dr Gerhard Ruedl from the Department of Sport Science at the University of Innsbruck says that there is evidence that ski helmets protect against head injury, and that one way to increase the use of helmets would be to make them included with ski hire. And, following some highly publicised deaths the issue has got a lot of press recently.

A recent study concluded that general head injury was reduced by 35% when helmets were worn, and this number increased to 59% for children under the age of 13.

Image via Wikipedia

But would wearing helmets actually make skiing safer? The issue needs to be looked a from the view point of how we, humans, deal with risk. Their are certain cases where changes are made, ostensibly, to make people safer, which in fact don’t.

With the advent of ABS braking – an innovation that greatly improves a cars breaking ability – you would expect to find that you would have safer drievrs. This wasn’t the case. Supplying drivers with ABS actually made them worse drivers: breaking harder, driving faster, tailgating other cars more often. So the introduction of ABS didn’t reduce the rate of accidents. So what happened? Drivers were consuming the extra risk reduction, they could now drive faster and more dangerously for the same risk as before. This type of risk homeostasis doesn’t happen all the time, but it does happen often enugh that it should be consideerd.

So where does this fit in with ski helmets? Ski helmets may provide a fasle sense of security, resulting in faster skiing and riskier behaviour which in itself could lead to more accidents.

Overall the authors believed that the evidence points to helmets having a protective effect and that we should increase the use of helmets. But then that’s what they thought about ABS. Food for thought…

Related articles

• Helmets reduced ski injuries (lv.com)
• Ski helmet use ‘makes sense’ (bbc.co.uk)
• Ski helmets have a lesson for us … on ‘localism’ (boris-johnson.com)

You’ve just got back from your ski holiday. You’ve got another year to wait until your next trip. Depression begins to set in.

The time for worry has past. With an Alpinesofa you can have the thrill and joy of skiing whilst sitting at home watching Eastenders.

What are you wating for?

This week members of the International Olympic Committee are visiting the proposed sites of the Annecy Winter Olympics 2018.

Image via Wikipedia

Chamonix is the proposed site of the ice hockey, and in Les Houches we’d have all the alpine skiing events. It would be a major boon for the area, and voting takes place in Durban on July 6th.

Unfortunately the French bid has been plagued with internicine warfare recently, but the South Koreans have come pretty close to actual warfare so it looks like it could be between Annecy and Munich. (Do they actually have mountains in Germany?).

Related articles

• Annecy delivers official bid documents to host 2018 Games (thestar.com)
• French 2018 Olympic bid chief quits (theglobeandmail.com)
• Annecy 2018 bid will fight on, says French IOC member (reuters.com)