Indoor Snow Venues

ZorbaTehZ

http://www.natives.co.uk/places/snowdomes.htm
This is teh shít. (Check out the Milton Keynes one)

Anyone know if there's any plans for an Indoor Snow Venue to be built in Ireland? Is it such a crazy idea really?
I mean look at the UK - they have 4 and another 7 are to be built. Even countries like France and Germany that have an abundance of snow covered mountains have an arena each. The amount of Irish people going on ski/boarding holiday's is increasing every year. I'd love to see an equivalent here ( I know theres some kind of artificial slope in Portmarnock or something - but I heard it's crap)
What do peeps thing?

robinph

It would be good if there was something better than just Kilternan for us to go and practice on out of season. I guess it would be a fairly big risk for someone to come in to set something up though as there is nothing else available at the moment really to gauge the level of interest that there might be from. Skiing holidays are still a relatively new thing for the Irish to be going on though compared to the UK.

edmund_f

found this ages ago..

http://www.snowboardclub.co.uk/tb.php?/news/article.html?newsid1171027979,13020

jimdev

Yeah, there is a sight under construction in Newtownmountkennedy (love that place name) that consists of a hotel, apartments, shopping complex, cinemas etc etc but importantly, they also plan to build a snowdome as the final part of construction. It will act as a ski slope in winter and will be converted to a beach-style resort in summer (turning the fridges on back to front to make it really hot inside).

Construction is under way on the hotel and other parts but the snowdome will not be ready for a long time. I have heard rumours that the developers only put the snowdome in the plans to get permission and are gonna delay the building and then declare it too big a risk to further their investment by building it. But that's could be heresay and gossip to be honest. I had heard something like 2011 or 2012 but that might be a bit soon.

If the snowdome was built now it would have the largest vertical of any snowdome in Europe (ie difference in altitude between top and bottom of the slope). Also it'll be about 3-4 times the skiable area of Kilternan, although since it's real snow, you may be down much quicker, it's wider too.

Here are some links:
The old Indo article from when it got approved
irishsnowboarder.com forum topic about it (we all went nuts when we heard about this a few years back). New site here
http://www.kellyandocallaghan.ie/sports-summersun.jsp
http://www.snow365.com:9673/snow365/NEWS/021405_2
http://www.snowboardclub.co.uk/tb.php?/news/article.html?newsid1088072790,97925,

Pablo

that's a great piece of information jimdev thanks !

I've never used either the fake snow or the indoor skiing, but I guess I'd use it if that was the only thing available.

ZorbaTehZ

jimdev wrote:

irishsnowboarder.com forum topic about it (we all went nuts when we heard about this a few years back). New site here

Thanks for that link mate; will be checking it out.