September 29, 2017

No more broken leg flights from Tyrol

Filed under: Sports by Orangemaster @ 2:08 pm

This ski season marks the end of an era: Tyrol Air Ambulance, a major flight ambulance airline in Europe, is canning its special flights for Dutch holidaymakers who break a body part during their ski vacation. For the Dutch, the route took them from Tyrol, Austria to Rotterdam-The Hague Airport, aka ‘the plaster flight’ (in Dutch, ‘gipsvlucht’).

As of this season, when a Dutch resident breaks something, they’ll have to fly on a regular flight or take another mode of transport back home. It’s no longer profitable for Tyrol Air to operate these flights, as they had to leave with all the patients at the same time who weren’t all skiing in the same place. As well, once the patients arrived in the Netherlands, they had to be transported throughout the country, as they all don’t live in Rotterdam.

This special service has been around since the 1980s and has been less and less profitable over the past couple of years. Flights to France from Tyrol stopped a few ago, and according to the source of this article, it’s gone unnoticed.

For anyone who doesn’t understand that skiing is a sport and requires some physicality to do properly, do yourselves a big favour and learn to ski in one of the many indoor ski places in the Netherlands before going to some of the biggest mountains in the world. Do yourselves another big favour and don’t mix drinking and skiing – wait until you’re done for the day.

(Link: nos.nl)

Tags: , , ,

March 10, 2017

Huskies run amok at indoor ski hall

Filed under: Animals,Sports,Weird by Orangemaster @ 7:43 pm

Huskies

The Netherlands is quite flat, but people still ski here albeit indoors. The indoor ski hall SnowPlanet in Velsen-Zuid near Amsterdam had a special day out for dogs, specifically huskies.

Some 68 huskies were allowed to run around in the snow for the whole day, an event organised by a local group of dog enthusiasts for the very first time.

You’ll have to click on the link below for the short video.

(Link and screenshot: nhnieuws.nl)

Tags: , , ,

January 21, 2011

Saved by an SOS while snowboarding

Filed under: Nature,Sports by Orangemaster @ 2:40 pm

I have snowboarder friends in the French Alps at the moment, and I hope you’re not these two people.

Two Dutch snowboarders got stuck boarding the wrong way in the French Alps and ended up on a glacier. Oops. They had forgotten their mobile phones (extremely handy when skiing I found out) and stamped out SOS in big letters with their feet. Someone on the slopes saw them and they were rescued.

Don’t forget your mobile and make sure it’s charged. And bring a candy bar just in case.

(Link: rtl.nl, Photo of my last skiing trip in Tirol, Austria)

Tags: ,

January 14, 2008

Bernice Notenboom reaches South Pole on skis

Filed under: Dutch first,Nature,Sports by Orangemaster @ 1:57 pm
south-pole1.jpg

On 13 January, after 923 kilometres of skiing in 38 days, Bernice Notenboom has become the first Dutch woman to reach the South Pole on skis, having endured harsh conditions, including -45 degree winds. Reaching the South Pole on skis pulling a huge, heavy sled was no easy task. Bernice also had pneumonia apparently not entirely gone yet, which she thought was altitude sickness.

“Every day it was 2 hours and 10 minutes of skiing, then a break, then another 2 hours and 10 minutes of skiing, then a short lunch break and again 2 hours and 10 minutes of skiing and so on until the night. Then we set up tents, melted snow for water, filled thermoses, etc. Whew! Now its all over. No more mandatory kilometres a day.”

(Link and photo: ourfernie.com, link: arcticalert.nl)

Tags: , , ,