Finnish ski resort Pyhä with new investment

The Finnish resort of Pyhä isn’t too well known in the UK, but it has been gaining ground gradually over the past decade, thanks in part to a design masterplan from Canadian company called Ecosign, which also laid out Whistler. Next winter Pyhä is hoping to truly emerge on the international ski travel stage with a new 8 million Euro investment, the biggest in its history, on a state-of-the-art high-speed six-seater chair lift.

Austria’s Reinfried Herbst produced a fine second run to win the men’s World Cup alpine skiing slalom in Levi.

Croatia’s Ivica Kostelic was second and France’s Jean-Baptiste Grange was third.

Herbst, 31, was fourth after the first run on a course designed by his coach, but found the speed to upstage his rivals and win the sixth slalom of his career in a combined time of one minute and 49.79 seconds.

Kostelic was 0.28s behind Herbst with Grange, the winner on the same slope a year ago, 0.53s down.

Heavy snow has been reported falling across Europe’s already-open glacier ski areas in France, Italy, Switzerland and Austria and there has also been up to 10cm (4 inches) of fresh snow down at resort level in famous ski areas like Obergurgl in Austria and Klosters in Switzerland which are not due to open until next month.

There have been details of falls of up to a metre (over three feet) at Hintertux in Austria — the year-round ski area which first reported huge snowfalls in the same second-week of October lst year, which proved to be the start of nearly three months of snowfall, setting the Alps up for a great snow season last winter. It looks like history is repeating itself.

Whilst the famous Swedish Ice Hotel is made mostly of snow, the more recent Finnish SnowHotel has more ice in its construction – 300 tonnes to be precise.