Austria’s Hintertux glacier ski area is again giving anyone who would liked to try it the chance to drive a snow grooming tractor, better known in the UK as a ‘piste basher’. “Are you are a fan of piste machines and have you always dreamed of steering an impressive PistenBully with 600 horsepower by yourself? Then this is your chance!” a resort spokesperson said. Hintertux has its own PistenBully Test Area where you can experience first-hand how power and technology come together on snow. The upcoming test days are the 11th, 18th and 25th April as well as the 2nd May 2024 and you should just ..read more

Tickets have gone on sale for this year’s London Snow Show taking place at ExCeL on the 19-20 October 2024.  Adult tickets cost £10 a day for those aged 16 to 64 or £18 for a weekend ticket. Children aged under 16 are free and there’s a third off for seniors 65 and older. With the show no longer taking place at the NEC, Birmingham, the London show, which relaunched last year, is currently the only major UK show. Headline speakers announced for the show include Olympic and World Champion alpine ski legend Bode Miller as well as Britain’s own Dave Ryding and Aimee Fuller. Benji Alexander th ..read more

Superstar ski couple Mikaela Shiffrin and Aleksander Aamodt Kilde have announced their engagement in a joint Instagram post to their 1.5 million followers. The pair have been dating for about three years. Pic credit Mikaela Shiffrin and Aleksander Aamodt Kilde and Instagram Both have won the World Cup Overall title with American Shiffrin (29) the most successful  World Cup racer of all time with 97 wins. Norwegian Kilde (31) has more than 20 World Cup Downhill and Super G wins. Both have been injured this year, with Shiffrin returning to race in the Saalbach Finals in March but Kilde mis ..read more

St. Moritz is the latest big-name European resort to sign up to one of the increasingly global season passes run by America’s Alterra Mountain Group of ski resorts (the Ikon Pass) or Vail Resorts (The Epic Pass).   In a social media post, the famous Swiss resort said, “Proud to be part of the Ikon Pass community starting today. Thanks to the new cooperation, owners of an Ikon Pass can ski or board at Engadin ski resorts for up to 7 days per season.” St Moritz and wider Engadin region means the Ikon pass now provides access to six leading European destinations, among almost 60 destinations ..read more

Exploring eight resorts by train on mainland Honshu and Hokkaido in the north threw up some big surprises. Tom Herbst reports on what it’s like to hit the pistes in the Land of the Rising Sun. It all happened so fast. The apartment block next to us started making an odd whistling noise, my iPhone’s emergency alarm screamed and a text from the Japanese Meteorological Agency arrived simultaneously warning, ‘Stay calm and seek shelter nearby’. But, it was when the road started vibrating seconds later that it became bloody obvious what was going on. No, it’s not every day you go to a ski resort an ..read more

Ski resorts always make an effort for April Fools Day, with French resorts trying particularly hard with their “poisson d’avril” then (5-8 hours later due to the time difference), US ones too.  Here are some of the best from past April 1sts. And here are some of our favourites this year: Val d’Isère – Ski & Cheese Race Kudos to Val d’Isère who have gone all out with their ‘Ski & Cheese’ race, chasing a Beaufort cheese rolling down the Face de Bellevarde emulating the British Gloucester cheese downhill chases. They trailled the ‘new event’ in late March and have created a full web ..read more

Ski holiday company Iglu Ski has trawled through more than two decades of snow and sunshine data from snow reporting experts Snow-forecast to determine which of Italy’s snow-sure, higher altitude resorts score the most highly on both counts to most likely deliver the next April ski  conditions. Cervinia, which as of last Autumn is now open for snowsports year-round, conditions permitting, came out on top with average April weekly snowfall of 43cm, an average of 1.8 sunny days a week and of about one powder day each week. Passo Tonale, due to open until 5th May and currently posting one o ..read more

19-year-old Czech snowboarder Jakub “Kuba” Hroneš has etched his name in the annals of snowboarding history by executing the world’s first triple flip off a rail. “Officially titled the Switch Boardslide Switch Triple Underflip 1170, the trick is a manoeuvre where the snowboarder approaches the rail with their non-dominant foot forward, rotates 90 degrees on the rail, faces downward toward the landing, launches off the rail, performs a triple flip, adds a 90-degree rotation to the left, and lands with their dominant foot forward. This results in a triple flip with three-and-a-half rotations i ..read more

Lucas Braathen, 23, the young Norwegian ski racing superstar who dramatically retired from competition at the start of the season last autumn, has announced he will restart his career for the 2024/25 season. Speaking at a press conference at the Hangar-7 in Salzburg, Braathen announced that as well as resuming his career, he’ll be racing for Brazil, his mother’s home country, in a switch from the Norwegian Ski Federation. “Coming back to the sport of Alpine Skiing, representing Brazil, makes me beyond proud. My love for sports was found in the streets of São Paulo, playing football with my fr ..read more

As a winter of mixed-fortunes in terms of snow conditions in most areas of the skiing world nears its conclusion, the final week of March has already delivered, or is about to deliver, a final wintry blast and a good deal of snowfall for most ski regions. Parts of The Alps, at least higher slopes, have seen 20-40cm accumulations over the past few days and there’s a lot more forecast, particularly on Wednesday-Thursday, with some areas likely to see a metre of snowfall accumulate on high terrain by Easter Sunday …if those forecasts prove correct! Lech, Davos, Saalbach and Verbier have posted 25 ..read more