There’s always some new stories to do with the pandemic and ski holidays and rather than detail everything we thought we’d start doing a weekly summary, here’s week two.
It rarely makes any difference to the fact that we can’t go skiing and many people don’t want to know until there’s some clear good news.
But for those who do want to know, here’s the latest bad and good news of interest to skiers.
Bad
- Germany has extended its lockdown to 7th March leading a number of leading ski areas to call it a day on the 20-21 ski season. They say even if allowed to open that late in the season it will be too late for it to be worth the cost and effort to do so for a few final weeks.
- Ski areas in Austria have had to reassure local skiers that they do n ot need da a negative virus test allowed to go skiing. There have been rumours circulating that this would be a requirement of tighter regulations. Austrian ski slopes are allowed to open at present but only for locally based skiers, not overnight visitors.
- The governments of the various British nations have all increased restrictions on international travel in an attempt to limit the arrival of new variants of the virus from abroad. This is good news for public health but bad news for any hope of Brits travelling to ski before the season is over.
Good
- Italian ski areas will start re-opening from Monday, unless there is some last-minute hitch. The country has divided its regions into a colour-coded tiered-system according to current pandemic levels. Most are in the lower-risk yellow category and can re-open slopes with all the pandemic precautions in place. Dolomiti Superski say they’ll start a phased re-opening from Monday. The Milky way region from Saturday 20th. The South Tyrol region is an orange zone though and will need to wait until March. If Italy’s slope s do open as expected it will leave France as the only major ski nation with its lifts still closed.
- French ski area Val Thorens is cheering people up by putting genepi in their hand sanitiser.
- Ski areas in Ontario, Canada, the only province or state in North America that had its ski centres closed by the local government due to the pandemic, can re-open from February 16th (next Tuesday).
- It has snowed even more in Scotland and seen record February low temperatures so when ski areas eventually are allowed to re-open, there will hopefully be plenty of snow waiting. Pictured below is the recently dug out road to The Lecht ski area.
- Poland has re-opened its ski areas.
Disclaimer:
By writing about what’s happening in ski resorts at present we are not implying anyone can go to them at present, or should try to go to them at present. We also apologise to those who have read this news against their will or better judgement and are upset to read anything about skiing at the moment whilst we can’t go skiing. Travel from the UK for non-essential reasons is currently banned, as is travel in to most ski nations whether lifts are open or not or requires quarantine on arrival in most cases. Even if this were not the case travel options are limited and few insurance policies cover travel in the pandemic.
Image top credit: Whiteface Ski Area, New York State, USA
