Innsbruck Diary
The second International Congress on Ski Slopes and Trails was held at Innsbruck, Austria, September 29-October 2 this year. Sponsored by the Austrian Institute for Construction of Schools and Sports Premises (OISS) and the International Working Group for the Construction of Sports Premises (IAKS), the four-day meeting was attended by over 250 representatives.
The lectures and discussions were excellent and they covered a multitude of areas: ticket facilities, arrangement of parking areas, entrance and egress from lifts, technical lift regulations, detachable grip lifts, (primarily on gondolas), the special problems of installation of lifts on glaciers and the general planning of ski areas.
The legal aspects of skiing were also covered, with talks on the legal consequences of skier collisions, responsibilities arising from neglect of safety precautions on trails and the legal impact of using motorized vehicles on trails.
One conclusion that could be drawn from the Congress is that European and North American areas face common problems. Japan runs a close second to the U.S. and may well overtake it in concentrating more skiers into limited spaces. Their progress, however, is seriously hampered by lift regulations which, by American standards, appear extremely severe for some types of lifts.
European ski areas, for their part, are moving toward methods successfully used in North America for handling skiers. Daily lift tickets were proposed at the Congress, and the use of mazes for loading of lifts was explored in depth. The matter of machine-made snow was discussed individually with members of the Congress, and without exception European area operators could not conceive of the use of snow-making equipment at their areas at its present-day costs.
The skiing industry in Europe appears to be undergoing a healthy growth rate. Konrad Doppelmayr & Ompersord Sons of Wolfurt, Austria, for example, has sold 222 lifts this year. All but about 30 of these sales are surface lifts, indicating the continued preference for surface lifts in Europe.—R.E.K.
