Features

It took a long time coming but this week the high runs opened up, including Mont Fort and Mont Gele. We finally had enough snow. Check out the PlanetSKI video and pictures too.

Zermatt seems to have topped the list with the most celebrities in town over the holiday period. Most were musicians.

Wolves are making a come back across Europe and many more are in the Alps. Sweden is the latest country to be concerned about their rapid growth.

The champagne shoots skywards in Verbier on New Year’s Eve in the ski resort’s main square. Check out the amazing video as people get soaked! We also have some pictures from round the Alps of the celebrations.

No, neither do we but an Israeli man is doing just that to try to break a world record. Some people do strange things.

As the festivities get under way it’s a pretty good time to be out in the mountains. We’ve had cold temperatures, some snow and now it’s time for the celebrations. It is a WHITE CHRISTMAS!

Sandy Murray celebrated his birthday in the way he knows best; by going to work and helping people ski.

It’s the biggest Christmas market in Switzerland and possibly the Alps. See a video of what it’s all about.

Every now and again a PlanetSKI reader sends us in a photo or tells us an amusing tale. If you are easily offended and don’t like sexual innuendo then don’t read on.

There’s a certain irony that snow in the UK prevented many people getting to the snow in the Alps as flights were cancelled and roads covered in snow. Some made it through on Friday.

It broke away from Antarctica a while ago but is now causing a few problems. Especially to ships.

You’ve obviously heard of PlanetSKI. Well one of our readers just spotted a PlanetSKIN and sent us in a photo.

Think of a ski racing course and you probably imagine testosterone filled young men in tight racing cat suits and bulging thigh muscles. Well, you’d be wrong.

That was the excuse a woman gave after she was caught using a lift pass belonging to a male.

The area fired up its lifts this week and PlanetSKI is there. There’s half a metre of fresh snow, miles of slopes, acres of off piste and no-one around. Heaven!

Not enough is being done to prepared for their eventual disappearance. That’s the warning from a group of scientists.

The technology is being used with some success in drought stricken areas in parts of sub-Saharan Africa. It’s a concept known as cloud seeding.

A competition was launched by the Canadian resort of Sun Peaks to find the best ski bum. Contestants from 9 countries are battling it out and it’s turned into quite an event.

Some female ski instructors have taken their kit off for a new calendar. They are not the first ones to use their bodies to sell a product.

What? Glacier surfing……are you serious? Yes, check out the video it’s interesting.

We see quite a few and some are good, many are excellent while a few make us take a sharp intake of breath.

Unless you happen to be a parent worried about exams with kids nagging you why they can’t ski this winter. They have to study that’s why.

A young boy horrifically injured in a ski crash survives. He was in a coma for weeks and his family thought he would die.

A new company has been launched to help you, but it doesn’t come cheap. You will, though, remember it for the rest of your life.

The UK snowboarders Ben Kilner and Dom Harrington strutt their stuff. It may be a couple of weeks ago but so what?

It was going to be Steve Coogan but now it may be Rupert Grint who played Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter films.

Conditions up on the glacier are pretty good at the moment. All the lifts are open and there are a handful of people enjoying a few pre-season turns. James Cove is there.

It’s not often we repeat a news story here on PlanetSKI, but this time we are. Frith Finlayson passed away last month. He was in his 80’s.

In his final blog from Saas Fee the young trainee racer, 16-year old Ben Clatworthy, rounds of his week. It’s been quite a time.

Eventually. PlanetSKI reporter, Sarah Vizard, hooked up with some friends she’d done a few seasons with to visit The Freeze in Battersea, London. So, what was it really like?

It’s race day for our intrepid young blogger from Saas Fee, Ben Clatworthy is training with the Kandahar race club high up on the glacier.

16-year old Ben Clatworthy continues his daily blog from the Kandahar race camp in Saas Fee. Today was a lie in some competitive racing and the sight of an elderly woman walking her pet goat.

That’s because it is. A PlanetSKI reader saw what looked like a ski rack on the back of a bus in London this month. Strange but true.

The Kandahar Ski Team is race training in Saas Fee this week and I’m blogging from the slopes. The Kandahar coaches kids and has seen some of the best British racers pass through.

We are showing some pictures of Pamela Anderson snowboarding in a mini-dress and flashing her knickers. Have all our standards gone downhill? Probably.

We all know about extreme skiers and snowboarders – well how about extreme animals. Check out the video.

Cate Langmuir, the ex-editor of The Good Ski Guide magazine, appears on the BBC as part of The Electric Proms. She’s singing in a Bulgarian choir.

Our reporter in Saas Fee has just sent us in these pictures from the Swiss resort. The best skiers in the world are training; Bode Miller prepares by playing tennis.

It’s true, we have a video or two of a skiing robot. It not that fast but looks pretty stylish, however perhaps it should do as it’s controlled by computers.

She isn’t just any old snowboarder, she is Leona Lewis. We saw her snowboarding for the first time last winter in Ischgl and obtained some video of her first tentative turns.

PlanetSKI takes a fond look back at one of the greatest racers of them all. Hermann Maier. Our content editor was priviledged to see him race on several occasions.

We are not talking about the media’s coverage of it, but the facts. It was, according to some, going to mean the end of skiing. But we hear less about it now.

More and more people seem to be heading indoors to ski and snowboard in the UK. Why and what’s it like?

We don’t want to overdo it but the hits have shot up and comments are flooding in about the retirement of Hermann Maier. So here are some videos and pictures of what he did best. Race.

They are one of the most beautiful animals on the planet, but they are an endangered species. Here on PlanetSKI we set out to discover a little bit more about them.

The footprints look like being the largest ever found and are causing much excitement in the scientific community and beyond.

It may be a strange looking construction and perhaps out of place in the high Alps, but its green credentials can’t be faulted. Welcome to the new Monte Rosa mountain hut.

It’s the latest adventure sport and is a bit like riding a BMX bike or motorbike, except it’s on water. Checkout the videos.

A mountain in Wales used to be named Carnedd Uchaf but now it’s called Carnedd Gwenllian. It’s official.

It aims to help the street children of Sierra Leone and here at PlanetSKI we think it is a great enterprise and worthy of support.

2,500 soldiers have been to the Swiss ski resort as part of the “White Knight Exercise” where they train, race and relax. Some of them after serving in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Regular readers will know that we don’t cover just skiing and snowboarding stories on PlanetSKI. We also report on ones that, er, tickle our fancy.

It may be only September but PlanetSKI reader, Xavier Adam, has just booked his first ski trip. It’s going to be in November, but he doesn’t know where. He’s got a few other plans too.

Actually these are from last winter (2008/09) but we are now asking our readers for this winter so we thought this mght refresh people’s memorires. Send your best or worst moments of 2009/10 to [email protected]