The art of skiing

Arabella Mileham reviews the Christie's vintage ski poster auction. 

The annual ski sale at Christie’s South Kensington yesterday was a steady, if lacklustre affair. Perhaps it was just bad luck, being the thirteen annual auction of vintage ski posters, but whereas previous sale have seen bidders scrambling for the top lots, this year’s sale totalled just under the £500k mark, with only 70 per cent sold by lot. That's nearly £300k less than the total sale made at the sale's height in 2008.

Traditional favourites proved to be the safest bet, with rarity again realising the highest prices. The top lot of the day was an anonymous 1913 poster of Gstaad's Royal Hotel & Winter Palace (£22,000 including buyers premium), while the visually arresting cover lot, a 1931 poster of Zermatt by Pierre Kramer, came in at £15,000. The stark graphics showing a shadowy ski-jumper set against the Matterhorn had elicited to a lot of interest on the phones. 

 © Christie’s Images Limited 2009

Elsewhere, Emil Cardinaux's domination seemed to have slipped a little to make way for Olympic fever. Two of the top five portrayed the Olympic rings - Gordon Witold's 1932 Lake Placid poster and the 1928 poster by Hugo Laubi, II Olympische Winterspiele at St Mortiz - although ironically, both posters hark from an era before downhill skiing was included as an Olympic sport. 

Since its inception in 1997, the Christie’s Ski Sale has enjoyed steady growth year-on-year with prices far exceeding estimates on some of the top lots. An anonymous 1925 poster of Wengen was the favourite two years in a row, increasing from £16,800 in 2006 to £22,800 only a year later. The most staggering result however came in 2008, when an anonymous Russian poster of 1952, originally estimated at £600 - £800, became a tug-of-war between two bidders and achieved a new record of £36,500.

However, it seems that prices have returned to a more sustainable level and estimates have been very firmly ‘recalibrated’ this year. With the Russian market talking a palpable hit at the onset of the recession, the presale estimate on the same image was a meagre £1,500 - £2,000 which actually proved a little on the generous side. Despite such a gloomy prognosis though, the middle market remained fairly steady and it is still possible to pick up a bargain.

Christie's Olympic fundraiser

With the Winter Olympics only weeks away, a charity auction held at Christie’s South Kensington last night helped raise £18,000 towards Team GB’s costs in Whistler. Organised by Snowsport GB and ASK4 Events, the evening was to highlight the work put in by our Olympic Squad as well as to raise funds to support their training and costs. Members of the Olympic teams past and present mingled with snowsport enthusiasts and art aficionados against a backdrop of fabulous vintage ski posters, which will be auctioned next week in the annual Christie's Ski Sale.

There's no denying that Team GB would benefit hugely from an injection of cash, after a summer of financial turmoil for its governing body, Snowsport GB. So with great gusto, Hugh Edmeads, Christie’s Head of International Auctioneering, set about whipping up bids from the assembled throng. However, the party atmosphere seemed to get a tad uncontained and there was furious shushing from strategically placed Christie’s staff at the back of the room.

There are now less than three weeks to go before the Winter Olympics start in Vancouver and the athletes are firmly concentrating on those few moments that will determine whether they earn their place on the podium.

Huskies and canyons

Arabella Mileham recovers her aching muscles with a spot of canyoning in the Leutasch Valley - January 13, 2010

Oh, I can also definitely feel muscles that I was not aware of before today! Stupidly, I wasn’t quick enough of the mark when we arrived and failed to book a massage - a quick swim and a sauna had to suffice for my aching limbs before dinner in Seefeld. After wandering through the picturesque centre of the little town, snow softly falling all around, we came to the Krachelemoos, a fab restaurant tucked away in a corner side street. This originally started life as two farmhouses several hundred miles apart, but they were carefully demolished and rebuilt in the centre of Seefeld. As well as the atmospheric decor, the food itself was absolutely fantastic – a particularly mouthwatering shashlik of pork on creamed Savoy cabbage with a traditional slice of surprisingly light Tirolean dumpling. The description barely does it justice - I haven't had anything so beautifully cooked for ages - but this was followed by apfelstudel with a cinnamon and toffee ice-cream and the now obligatory schnapps.

After the strenuous activity of yesterday, today’s plan of snow shoeing and dog-sledding with www.tirolalpin.at Tirol Alpin sounded a lot more chilled. However, I hadn’t reckoned on being leashed to Maggie, the most inconsistent and noisy husky on the planet. She didn’t get off to a brilliant start by lying down in the snow to have her tummy scratched and it soon became clear that she just wanted attention - running up the hill with me lumbering after in my unwieldy snow shoes only to stop dead and wait for me, just as the gradient increased. After the first hill, she was relegated to the sled and I was attached to a rather less high-maintenance dog to enjoy the walk through the walk. Tramping through the trees in the woods behind Kirchplatz was lovely – so rarely do you get to wander quietly and just enjoy the scenery rather than whizzing past it. However our destination was a gorge further up in the forest for a spot of canyoning.


Now, I have to admit that I’m a bit of a wuss when it comes to throwing myself off cliffs. I probably shouldn’t be as I spend half of my childhood clambering over rocks, climbing trees and swinging across the garden on ropes, but I generally prefer to hold on wherever possible! The zip-wire across the gorge was great fun but I was distinctly less keen on the 40m abseil when we got to the other side. But a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do. So with jelly legs and a white face, I braved it for the descent. There was quite a large over-hang so I ran out of cliff to walk down after 15m or so and it was with undignified relief that I reached terra firma and was able to clip myself onto the ropes strung across the rocks.
As it was pretty nippy so we didn’t explore the canyon for very long and emerged at the top to a picnic, complete with tea mit rum and a rather good schapps. (It seems that anytime is schnapps time in Tirol!) After racing home through the trees on the dog sleds, there was time for a quick coffee before collecting our stuff for our final cross-country trail.

We’d already pumped Steve, the Headwater rep, for information about where to go, so armed with maps and cross-country skis and with the light slightly fading, we were dropped off at Moos for our 5km langlauf home. Our route took us along the floor of the valley with views over the Wetterstein to our left. After a great deal of faffing getting into our skis, we made quite good time and became so mesmerized concentrating on the tramlines in front of us that we only stopped for a quick hot chocolate when we were in sight of Kirchplatz - about 5 mins from home. Perhaps it wasn’t such a good move as sitting down made my newly discovered muscles start to seize up and it was with great difficulty (and not a little swearing) that I clipped my skis back on for the final 200 yards towards home.

I think next time I go cross-country skiing, I might spend a little bit longer preparing my pretty pathetic leg muscles. The Vikings who allegedly invented this great sport were probably a darn sight hardier than I am!
First published on welove2ski.com

Bambi on skilaufs

Arabella Mileham tries her hand (as well as her arms and legs) at a spot of cross-country skiing in Leutasch in the Austrian Tirol - January 12, 2010

Tucked in a corner of Olympiaregion Seefeld, 25km northwest of Innsbruck, the Leutasch valley and neighbouring Seefeld is a mecca for cross-country skiing. I headed out for a few days with some seasoned ski journalists, eschewing my normal downhill in favour of this ancient, Nordic sport.

Innsbruck was unusually snowy when we landed and the white stuff was still falling as we arrived at the Sporthotel Xander, in Kirchplatz after the shortest possible transfer– a smooth and painless 45 minutes after touching down. It had been very peculiar flying over a snowy Britain on an almost empty Easyjet flight (an unheard of combination) en route to the Tirol so this made it a hat-trick of unusual proportions.


Although we were primarily here for the cross-county, a visit to the Alps wouldn’t be complete without a little downhill, so Tuesday morning saw us up, bright and early, making out way down the road to Rosshütte, to check out the local slopes at Seefeld. It's only a ten minute ride by car down the valley, so pretty painless. After all the snow the night before, it was beautiful groomed corduroy all the way, with some great powder to the sides of the pistes.

I probably should have put my nice, fat all-mountain Salomon Tornado Extremes through a darn sight more gruelling test, but as the first run since April last year (and after a few schnapps the night before) I was very restrained on the powder-front.
It was a pretty blinking cold -9 degrees up top but gloriously sunny – my teeth were definitely the coldest part of me because I was grinning so much to be back on the slopes.

We worked our way around the slopes of Rosshütte with our knowledgeable and charming guide (the head of the Tourist Office for the region, no less) and ripped down virtually empty pistes towards queue-less chairs, only stopping for a brief and very welcome der Kakao mit ruhm at the new Rosshütte restaurant. As well as the new café and terrace, the lifts have been upgraded over the last three years to speedy six-chairs, although the Seefeld Jochbahn is still a dinky, red phonebox style, 12-person gondola. Although it’s a bit of a tight squeeze, it was worth it for the views over the spectacular Karwendel Nature Park to the northeast and Wetterstein mountains, as well as the only black run of the area.

Looking towards the Karwendel national park

Over the other side of the valley at Hamelekopf, we could see some interesting lines off-piste down a jaggedy couloir, but apparently the off-piste can be unpredictable and it is not readily encouraged. However, the top of the route yielded some beautiful, ungroomed powder, on the way to lunch at the Reitherjoch Alm. We rounded off the feast with a massive shared skillet of ‘Kaiserschmarrn’ – a whopping Tirolean caramelised fluffy pancake, liberally soused with icing sugar and served with apple puree. A main course in its own right, it’s completely delicious but probably highly dangerous to the waistline -a few spoonfuls each were more than enough to send us pelting through the trees, to the alarm of the locals walking up, and down the final run towards town.
A quick scoot across town and a boot swap later, we were kitted out and ready for our first foray into langlaufing. There are two styles of cross-country, classic and skating, and we were going for the former, apparently the most efficient way to move across a flat area of snow - although maybe not the way I was doing it! The Cross Country Academy in Seefeld is situated by the Seekirchl and Olympicabad, by the entrance of one of the many cross country trail and run by former Olympic medallist, Martin Tauber. The upside of this is great tuition but the downside is that they make it looks so damn easy while you’re slipping Bambi-like across the frozen plains.

Bambi on skilaufs – how the hell do you stay upright?

Although the boots are a lot comfier than their Alpine counterparts, I felt horribly precarious perched on top of my ridiculously thin skis. Settling into tramlines cut in the snow of the trail made it a lot easier to keep boot, knee, and nose in line while walking in arabesque. However, by the time I’d worked up enough steam to light up Oxford Street, I started to get into some sort of rhythm, swinging one arm forward, the opposite leg back and slightly bouncing on the middle of my ski to prevent myself slipping backwards. (they are softly rippled on the underside which is supposed to help) This was fine, after a fashion, on the level but far less effective when faced with a slope. However, after an hour and 40 minutes, we’d done a mind-boggling 7km around the course, stopping only to look at the Olympic ski jump and check out the new biathlon range.

Star pupil or sympathy hug, you decide

Although it was a huge fun, I fear in will be agony tomorrow no matter how many hours I spend in hotel's steam room.

Arabella travelled to Austria with Headwater on the “Cross Country Skiing in Leutasch and Seefeld” holiday. Prices of start at £1,009 per person for seven nights 4* accommodation at the Hotel Xander including breakfast and dinner, ski equipment hire (skis, boots and poles) and a guided ski programme with a Headwater resident representative. With flights and transfers, prices start from £1,187 per person Gatwick to Innsbruck with Thomson Airways, or can be arranged from most UK airports.

First published by welove2ski.com