It's skiing, Jim, but not as we know it

Skiing is a pleasurable experience. Once mastered – something any skier will tell you is best done at an early age – it is one of the best methods of relaxation known to man. Yet for the English skiing was until very recently something very special; something of an exclusive experience. The cost of travelling to France, Switzerland, Italy or Austria was, in the days before budget airlines, too high for most ordinary families; it certainly was for mine. Luckily, at the end of the 1970s schools began filling a much needed gap in the market, offering pupils cheap ski trips to less well known resorts, often via long, nauseating and tedious coach journeys. That was how your correspondent began skiing, more than 20 years ago now, and though those school ski holidays were the very antithesis of the somewhat false image of glamour skiing has, I am eternally grateful for the introduction they gave me to this fabulous sport.
For people living in Romania skiing has always been a far more accessible pastime. There are resorts of varying sizes littered across the entire country, from the well-known Prahova Valley resorts of Sinaia, Predeal and Poiana Brasov to the little-known north Carpathian resorts of Borsa or Vatra Dornei. In all there are more than 30 locations in Romania boasting at least one form of uphill transport and groomed pistes, even if, in the case of Straja in Hunedoara, that transport is confined to one very short drag lift with a piste or two either side.
With such an abundance of resorts it is no wonder that skiing is a run of the mill activity in Romania and one that increases to grow in popularity despite the problems I will outline below. Indeed, the number of active or semi-active skiers per head of the population is – I would assume – impressive. It is all the more depressing then that so little money is being spent on improving what is an old, out-dated, creaking and slow skiing infrastructure. For while there may be 30 ski resorts in Romania, most are like Straja: one or two lift affairs not really worthy of anybody’s time except that of keen locals. Even Predeal, one of the better resorts, comprises of one chair lift, one drag lift and one pulley-lift. With the number of skiers wanting to use these lifts growing all the time, the result is obvious: long queues. Very long queues. With great fanfare a brand new, high-speed chair-lift in Busteni was opened last December, but even here the lift serves just one ski-run, and crowds are unpleasantly large.
The worst offender is the country’s “showpiece” resort of Poiana Brasov. Since 1989 not one new ski lift has been built. In that time, however, the capacity of the resort has increased ten-fold, as new hotels, villas and pensions open all the time. Queues at the two Poiana Brasov cable cars are therefore longer than even the most patient skier can take. Two hours is not an uncommon wait on weekend afternoons. Such a wait robs all but the most ardent of his or her appetite to ski. This is a crying shame, made all the worse by the cost: skiing in Romania is a relatively far more expensive affair than it is elsewhere in Europe. A 60 point ski lift pass in Poiana Brasov – enough for a decent day’s skiing – costs almost 800,000 lei, and in exchange you get access to less than 15 kilometres of piste served by two old cable cars and a decrepit open-top gondola. In Courchevel, France, a daily Three Valley pass costs 35 euros, and gives access to more than 100 modern cable cars, chair lifts, gondolas and ski lifts, and over 600 kilometres of queue-free, cruisy-choosy skiing on empty, wide-open pistes. As they say: you do the math.
Skiing is popular in Romania, and it is clear that Romanians like to ski in their own country. But their patience is wearing thin. If there is no substantial improvement in the skiing infrastructure Romanians will vote with their feet and head for Bulgaria or Austria. The budget-seeking Western tourists and school parties who once came to Romania to ski on the cheap have – a few brave souls excepted – long fled elsewhere. If Romania wants to persuade them to come back the people who own and administer the country’s resorts will need to take action.

* Craig Turp is the author of the forthcoming Berlitz Guide to Bulgaria, the Eyewitness Top 10 Guide to Budapest and acts as the editor of Bucharest In Your Pocket.