A debate on whether the amount of piste kilometres claimed by ski areas was really true has had a new real world result with Austria’s giant SkiWelt region employing an independent surveying company to claim that it really offered the 279km of piste it claimed it did.
The issue came to a head last year when ski resort journalist and cartographic expert Christoph Schrahe (ski-weltweit.de) used online digital mapping to compare leading ski areas’ claimed terrain sizes with a precise online measurement, he found most did not measure up.
A resulting media furore in Austria and Switzerland (although the issue is worldwide) lead to calls for standardised measurements when it was found that some ski areas were counting wide ski slopes three times due to different lines that could be taken on them and earlier this year the Ziller valley announced it was reducing the size of terrain claimed.
The surveying company that the SkiWelt employed, however, found that they had exactly measured their slope length correctly already,
“Now we have it in black and white: SkiWelt Wilder Kaiser – Brixental really is Austria’s largest interconnected ski resort. Precisely 279 kilometres of slope has been calculated in the SkiWelt by an external surveying company. Leaving no doubt that no other ski region can offer more uninterrupted skiing pleasure,” said a statement from the area.
