China is seeing a large number of dry ski slopes opening as well as indoor snow centre as skiing and snowboarding continue to gain in popularity as the country moves towards its target of 300 million people engaged in snow or ice sports ahead of the 2022 Olympics. These year-round ski centres address an issue China faces in that although

The Bilingual European School of Milan (BES) in Italy now offers skiing in the schoolyard with the installation of a new dry slope, 30 metres long and 10 metres wide with a safe gradient of 10%, by the Bergamo-based company Neveplast. The new slope was declared open by former Alpine skiing champion Giorgio Rocca while the Alpine skiing World Championships

The long awaited redevelopment of Sheffield Ski Village, one of Europe and the UK’s former leading dry ski centres, is still due to go ahead according to its developer. Alastair Gosling, of Extreme, told the Sheffield Star newspaper that the company now hoped to open the £25m project on the former Ski Village site in two years’ time in 2023.

A new centre which allows visitors to try skiing and surfing at the same location, side by side, is set to open this May in Oklahoma City. The existing Riversport complex which already offers Olympic and Paralympic standard white water rafting and rowing as well as an artificial wave pool for surfers is to install a SkiMachine from Alpine Engineering

Austria’s Schladming ski area is set to unveil a new ‘startpark’ this spring at the resort’s Reiteralm ski area, already a favoured destination among ski and snowboard cross specialists who come from all over the world to train at the existing Cross Park there. The new startpark will have an added dimension that other training facilities do not however –

A dry ski slope has been announced as one of the attractions at a proposed £60m multi-sports centre planned for Preston. Christened ‘Phoenix Park’ the centre would be a development of the existing Trax education and sporting facility, which was established 20 years ago on the banks of the city’s Ribble Estuary near Preston Docks. Local media reports that a

The Pine Needles Slope was set up near Universal City by Sepp Benedickter, an Austrian ski racer who, among many claims to skiing fame, was also closely involved in the development of Sun Valley resort and also reputedly employed as a ski teacher by Hollywood stars including Henry Fonda and Gary Cooper on the dry slope.  He also appeared as

Italian dry ski slope manufacturer Neveplast, who are responsible for the longest ski slopes the world (over 1.1km), in the Russian republic of Chechnya, as well as the iconic power-plant ski slope in Copenhagen, have announced they have created a pump track for snowboardcross (SBX) world champion Michela Moioli. “I am very happy; I like it a lot! It was

One of the more interesting ideas for an artificial surface ski slope was put forward in 1958 by German industrialist Dr Rudolf Alberti. Alberti owned a mining operation in the country’s Harz Mountains. Established in 1958 and still in operation today as Deutsche Baryt-Industrie, the company produced barium sulphates and calcium fluoride. Dr Alberti, a keen skier, took an interest

On the same latitude line as the world-famous ski resorts in Hokkaido, four never-ending indoor ski slopes have opened at a new centre at Changchun, the capital of Jilin Province in China. Changhun, also known as “the Detroit of China” because of its immense automobile industry, is home to a large family entertainment centre including four ski slope machines manufactured