Following a post on the excellent Ski Bike Junkie Blog I wanted to share this gem with you. Descent World Racing colourfully illustrated the scene thus:

Oh my God! We have all just got a lesson in how to ride a pushbike. In conditions that could only be described as atrocious a small lad from the North of England schooled everyone else in the World and truly earned those Rainbow Stripes. Danny Hart, World-bloody-Champion!
Coming from a great season that has seen him twice lose out to a near-perfect Aaron Gwin, Danny lifted his game and threw down the kind of run of legends. If Danny is the Schoolteacher, then Champery must have proved itself to be the Classroom. Twice now it has caused the biking world to sit up and take notice, both in 2007 with Sam Hill and today with the diminutive Northerner.
We all knew there was something special about him since he first started racing in the Juveniles category at the SDA’s all those years ago, but still, oh my God!

Rider after rider came down, many having big problems with the ever-worsening track, and it was only when Brendon Fairclough crossed the line with a 3.55 that everyone stood up and took notice. Team-mate and danger-man Sam Hill came close with a 3.57 and Fabien Barel, in his last pro race, got a 4 minute dead. Then it was Fabien’s team-mate, Damien Spagnolo, who shocked us with an extremely fast and confident run beating the Bren-Dog by 2 seconds. Sam Blenkinsop managed to slot in behind this with a 3.54, but nothing could prepare us for what happened next. Looking like he was riding a different, grippier track, Hart-Attack attacked the course, nailing corners and keeping speed where others were losing front wheels and sliding out. He was up at the first split by four and a half seconds and nine seconds at the second. “Calm-down” we were all thinking, “don’t throw all this away at the end!”, but no, still a massive whip on the end jumps and he finished the run more than 11 (yes, ELEVEN) seconds up on the best (or rather second-best!) in the world. Wow!....You can read more about the Danny Hart here.

A week ago, here in the UK, the temperature was breaking records at nearly 30 degrees Centigrade that's 86 degrees on the Farenheit scale. Over the week the temperatures have plummeted and today it is struggling to make 12 degrees, which is equivalent to a paltry 54 degrees.
As I donned my lumberjack shirt and beanie hat this morning, I wondered whether recent reports of another colder than average winter to come will be proved correct. Recently David Eakin posted on the Facebook Snow Biking group:

Just got the latest La Nina report. "While it is not yet clear what the ultimate strength of this La Niña will be, La Niña conditions have returned and are expected to gradually strengthen and continue into the Northern Hemisphere winter 2011-12."

The basis of the forecast is on the prediction that a weak La Nina will be forming this fall and continuing through the winter. Last year, we had a strong La Nina with blocking over Greenland that lead to a very snowy winter across the Midwest and Northeast. While the pattern will be similar to last year, there will be changes in the pattern that will lead to the heavy snow areas shown on the map.

I am not convinced that blocking will be prevalent across Greenland this winter, however, with the trough axis predicted to be in the Midwest, that will lead to storms developing along the East coast and racing northeast. The cold will be back in the Appalachians, and that will lead to heavy snow in that area. The major cities will probably be fighting many mix precip storms with the snow lovers along the I-95 corridor pulling their hair over heavy snow versus ice and rain.
A storm track coming out of the Rockies will lead to storms moving through the western Great Lakes and a band of above-normal snowfall across the Midwest and western Great Lakes.
I also went with an above-normal snow area along the Front Range of the Rockies due mainly to arctic air masses coming down from Alberta.

Will the AccuWeather.com forecast live up to its name?

La Grande Motte Glacier - source Mike Doyle

"Summer continues in Europe. It's been mild and sunny recently but there's great snow around, especially in Austria. Tignes in France opened its glacier for the winter too. The Grande Motte Glacier at Tignes (20cm) is now open until 8th May 2012. There isn't a lot of snow available at the moment and only four lifts are running.

Colder weather, with the chance of a dusting of snow, is expected later this week.

The 2011 ski season has now ended in Australia. All resorts were closed on Monday 3rd October.

The season is winding down in New Zealand too although five resorts were still open for skiing on Monday. Cardrona, Porter Heights and Rainbow were among the resorts that closed. However, the remaining open resorts have great snow for the time of year and plenty of terrain available.

It's still very warm in Chile and Argentina. Most resorts remain open but El Colorado and La Parva in Chile have closed for the ski season."
Read more here

1979 saw the launch of BRITON Engineering Developments, but the story begins 10 years earlier.
When British winters were reliable for heavy snowfall, enthusiastic engineer Brian Thomas combined his two main passions, skiing and engineering. The goal was to get the most out of the seasonal snow. After various experiments he created the perfect solution, the BRITON Portable Ski Lift. It was an instant success and used Worldwide including the French and Japanese Winter Olympics in ‘92 and ‘98.

Ski lifts remained the sole objective of the company and when synthetic slopes started using the Portable, BRITON saw a new opportunity, leading to the invention of the QueueDodger in 1981 and the BritonButton in 1985. Both lifts are still widely used.

The company’s dedication to innovation was acknowledged in 1984 when Doppelmayr appointed them sole UK Agent, a position still proudly held with the world’s leading ropeway manufacturer.

BRITON increased its involvement with synthetic slopes as UK winters became less reliable for snow. The invention of BritonMist, the remarkable slope lubrication system was heralded by the industry as “The Biggest Advance in the Dry Slope Industry for 25 Years”.

The company went from strength to strength as it rounded off the decade with a key role in building Nevis Range, the UK’s newest mountain resort. This was a great recognition of the skills and expertise the company held.

1990 saw BRITON turn its attention back to the synthetic slope market. Seeing a chance to improve on current slope styles BRITON seized the opportunity to expand its design and build packages to create more exciting slopes..

This move was rewarded with the 6000m2 Søhøjlandet Snowsports center contract in Denmark and included the creation of features such as moguls, jumps and a half pipe previously seen only on mountain snow. The project was another great success, although injury rates highlighted the problems with outdated surfaces. BRITON could see that urban snowsports were still far from their potential; the challenge to improve the industry was too tempting to resist.

In 1996 after several years of intense development, encouraged by two UK Department of Trade and Industry awards, the revolutionary snowsports surface Snowflex® was launched transforming the possibilities of synthetic slopes.

When interviewed about Snowflex®, John Shedden, Director of Coaching for the English Ski Council said;

“…for the first time we have a safe, clean surface that people will come back to time and time again.”

Tired of the painful products manufactured as a sideline by the brush, plastic and carpet industries, BRITON had engineered Snowflex® on a clean sheet basis. This achieved the key criteria of producing a cost-effective, high quality urban snowsports experience.

Another recent internet discovery, the amazing fat snow bikes:

Fatbikes.com was really born in February of 2004 at the Susitna 100 winter endurance race in Alaska. Pushing their "fat bikes" equipped with uber-wide 44mm Snowcat rims through the night, Bill Fleming and Jamey Stull forged a friendship that ultimately resulted in the founding of Chain Reaction Cycles in Anchorage, Alaska. Taking their passion for winter cycling to the next level, they developed and produced the first aluminum fat bike, the 9:ZERO:7, named after the area code of Alaska. After selling their frames far and wide around the globe, it occurred to them that maybe a website devoted to fat bike afficianodos might assist in sharing their passion with others. And Fatbikes.com was born...

Anyone who SkiBikes is bound to be a bit weird, so it will come as no surprise when I confess another dark secret....I don't have a TV, I got rid of mine in 2003 after I got a BroadBand Internet connection. The idea of having to wait for someone to broadcast a programme you wanted to watch just seemed so last century.
And don't even start me off on the whole TV licence and viewing subscription issues!

I digress, I recently came across the BlinkBox website, where you will find a selection of both; free to view and chargeable films and television series, all available to watch on-line. The quality is good and there is very little buffering or glitching. You can find out more about BlinkBox here

One of their freebies is the excellent Freeze-Sports series, "A full-on winter sports series taking in freestyle boarders and heli-skiers; from Himalayan hot spots to the coolest ski destinations in India."

Here's what one reviewer had to say:

I don’t really watch much extreme sports but I felt this show was nice and refreshing. The whole programme is shot to perfection and the perfect soundtrack adds to the atmosphere of winter sports. There are plenty of slow-mo shots, making sure that the audience captures every detail of the stunt and it is something that you don’t complain about. You just wonder how they do it and you find yourself taking your hat off to the people who do this for a living. It would be nice if there were some commentaries or interviews with some of the boarders and skiers but that is just a minor thing and nothing to fuss about. Like I said before, the perfect soundtrack takes care of that and it suits the content.

Freeze-Sport - hurry up winter!