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Austria is set to implement “strict” mask rules and COVID-19 passes on ski lifts amid attempts to attract foreign tourists for the first time in two years, Reuters reported Monday. Skiers will be required to wear masks while using enclosed ski lifts and show proof of vaccination or a negative test when purchasing a ticket, according to Reuters. “This year there will definitely be winter holidays in Austria,” Austria Tourism Minister Elizabeth Koestringer said, according to Reuters. “We have developed strict rules for a safe winter.” Tourism makes up about 5% of Austria’s economic output, and it is still unclear...

''We've had so much snow and the cold to preserve it,'' Vazzano said. ''We had storm after storm after storm.'' At times the snow was so plentiful it was problematic. The blizzard in late January triggered travel warnings and skiers in the Boston area were shoveling rather than skiing. It was followed closely by four successive weekends of winter storms. Vazzano said a cold spell in February helped preserve the snow but discouraged some skiers. ''When you can't get out of your driveway you can't get to the mountain,'

Skiers trying to make their way to and from French Alps resorts were plunged into chaos on Saturday night as 15,000 cars were trapped on the roads and emergency overnight centres were set up to shelter trapped tourists. Across the Savoie region, thousands of people were trapped in their cars, snowed in their chalets or stranded at airports as long-awaited snow finally dumped on the Alps - several feet, in some places.

An ancient culture in the Chinese Altay Mountains offers a glimpse of how skiing evolved. The hunting party slowly glides into the Altay Mountains in search of elk. It is dead calm, minus 38°F. Just as their ancestors have for millennia, the five men traverse deep, feathery snow buoyed on handmade skis hewed from spruce, with strips of horsehide attached to the bottoms. In lieu of poles each man carries a single wooden staff. Since boyhood, they have learned to master their deceptively crude equipment with exquisite efficiency and grace—the grain of the horsehair providing traction to move uphill and...

Before Scandinavia: These could be the first skiers By Robert Marquand | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor BEIJING – Move over Bode. You may have competition you don't know about - among a sturdy skiing clan in northwest China. They are central Asians, Mongols, and Kazaks, living in the remote Altay mountains of Xinjiang province, where some claim skiing was first conceived. Using curved planks whose design dates back 2,000 years, the Altaic peoples are formidable skiers. They might not win a medal on perfectly groomed Olympic trails. But they can break their own paths, track elk for...

MONTPELIER, Vt -- Four Pennsylvania men who were lost in the woods for 30 hours in December after going out of bounds at Killington Resort were sent bills Thursday for the cost of their rescue by state police. Each of the men was assessed $4,177.87 to cover the cost of the rescue, said Lt. Donald Patch, whose barracks was in charge of the search Dec. 20, a night when temperatures plummeted to between 20 and 25 below zero. "Let's face the facts: Some people get lost accidentally, things happen, they make a mistake and that's one thing," Patch said. "When...

MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) -- Four Pennsylvania men who were lost in the woods for 30 hours in December after going out of bounds at Killington Resort were sent bills Thursday for the cost of their rescue by state police. Each of the men was assessed $4,177.87 to cover the cost of the rescue, said Lt. Donald Patch, whose barracks was in charge of the search Dec. 20, a night when temperatures plummeted to between 20 and 25 below zero. ``Let's face the facts: Some people get lost accidentally, things happen, they make a mistake and that's one thing,'' Patch said....