French Follow US Ski Area Measurement Example
French Follow US Ski Area Measurement Example
Published : 26-Oct-2015 02:08
(Serre Chevalier image Credit: Zoom Agency)
French ski areas appear to be starting to adopt the US model of measuring their ski slopes by area rather than piste length.
The new development seems to be a response by French ski area operators to adopt a standard measuring system, several years after the issue was first brought to the headlines by the German ski writer and cartographer Christoph Schrahe, who has now launched his own official ski area size measuring and verification service: http://www.pistelength.com - adopted by Kitzbuhel, Saalbach and other leading, so far primarily Austrian resorts, which had already been the first react to the publicity over unfair measuring practices two season ago.
The latest French move was first noted in late summer when Les 2 Alpes announced it would be publishing the hectares of area of its ski slopes, but (apparently) not piste length figures, any more.
Now Serre Chevalier has followed and created a page on its website explaining how it has measured its slope area (http://www.serre-chevalier.com/en/ski-area-total-surface). Again they talk about north America style area stats with acres and hectares, rather than piste length. They say they've had their ski area dimensions independently verified by third party specialists.
It will be interesting to see how many more French resorts do the same. France is famous for having the biggest ski areas in the world, dominating more tables of the top 10 or 20 biggest ski areas by total piste length, so switching to an area measure might be a step backwards for those areas like the 3 Valleys whose 600km/biggest in the world are almost trade marks.
Ski areas tend to be measured in three different ways around the world. By area in North America and in the southern hemisphere with the amount of easy, moderate and difficult terrain divided in to percentages; then by total trail length in Europe, although on the French-speaking side resorts tend to say how many green, blue, red and black runs there are, whilst on the German-side they go for the km of blue, red and black runs to make up the total.
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