The new ski season in Bansko started, on December 15, with a lot of snow and blocked roads to the town. A long queue of cars ended up waiting on the Blagoevgrad to Bansko road, delaying many visitors to the resort’s grand opening. There had been a heavy snowfall on the first day of the weekend and the roads had not been cleared in time.

Later the official guests of the event, ski champions Janica Kostelic, Kjetil Andre Aamodt and Marc Girardelli skied down the Alberto Tomba run, the highlight of the opening ceremony. Mountaineer Reinhold Messner was also among the special guests.

Kostelic, 26 in January, was born in Croatia and is the only woman alpine skier to win three gold medals, and one silver, at an Olympic games – in Salt Lake City in 2002.

She became the only woman to win four Olympic golds when she added to her 2002 tally with the combined event gold in 2006. She has won the World Cup three times and at the 2006 World Cup, she came first in all five of the competitions disciplines. In total, she has 30 victories in World Cup competitions. In 2007 Kostelic retired from professional skiing due to health problems.

Aamodt, from Norway, is famous for winning the most Olympic and World Championship medals for skiing – 20. In 1992 he became the youngest alpine skier to win an Olympic gold. Fourteen years later in Turin Aamodt won gold again, becoming the oldest alpine skier to do so. Asmodt has also retired from professional skiing.

The third celebrity who attended Bansko grand opening, Girardelli , another world champion skier, does not compete actively in competitions any more either. Girardelli told The Sofia Echo he is now devoted to golf.

After they had skied down the Alberto Tomba run, Kostelic, Aamodt and Girardelli attended a news conference.

Bansko concessionaire Ulen organised the demonstration by the three world champions as well as the grand opening of the season at Pririn’s premier winter resort. The company’s ski instructors also took part in the first run down the piste, accompanied by fireworks and music. A large screen was placed at the beginning of the ski road to entertain visitors.

Later in the day a concert was held at the first station on the gondola. Deo, KariZma, Diva ballet, Upsurt and Lora Karadjova all performed.

Bansko winter resort remains the biggest in Bulgaria and claims it is “The best ski resort in Eastern Europe”. With the addition, this year, of Chalin Valog 1 and 2 the resort now has 70km of ski runs. They are classed as medium to difficult and shown as red runs on the piste map. The new runs are right above the town and are serviced by a new four-seater Doppelymayer lift. Ulen said that even thought the new slopes are at quite a low altitude, the “Bansko ski factory guarantees enough covering through the whole season”.

Starting this season, all Bansko ski runs will be covered by artificial snow cannons. There are now 160 machines.

During the day on December 15 the snow cannons were working at full speed all the time even though it was snowing naturally. But the snow they produce can be dangerous if not well groomed by the piste bashers, which only work after the lifts stop operating for the day, at 5pm, and skiers go down to the town.

From a distance the artificial snow looks soft but its appearance can be quite deceitful. Close up, it is very hard and is more like ice crystals than soft snow flakes. The snow machines produce big balls of hard snow, which have to be groomed several times by the piste bashers before being skied on. For snowboarders it can cause more injuries as they have more contact with the snow, pushing up of the snow more often than skiers as they don’t have poles. Falling down in the artificial snow may seem like falling on soft snow, but in realty it is more like falling on ice.

Meanwhile, on December 18, WWF Bulgaria representative and Balkani Wildlife Society managing board member Katerina Rakovska told The Sofia Echo that about half of all ski slopes in Bansko had been built without environmental impact assessments (EIA). For those where EIAs were completed, several of the requirements were not followed.

One of the violations was that the EIA decisions from the year 2000 had exact requirements for the width of the pistes and they had been exceeded. Rakovska said the next breach was of the requirements was that no chemicals should be used to maintain the snow cover. The third violation of the approved EIA Rakovska quoted was of the requirement that the ski slopes had to be constructed without the use of heavy machinery. However, such machines were widely used in setting up Bansko ski zone.

“The other big violation of the EIA decision, in co-ordination with the Bansko ski zone Master Plan in 2000, was of the requirement that the bed capacity of the resort should not be increased,” Rakovska said. However, currently Bansko accommodates about twice as many visitors than in 2000.

She said the violations were the reason of for the erosion of Bansko hills. Some of the gullies caused by erosion were at least as tall as a person. “If the EIA was observed, this wouldn’t have happened,” Rakovska said. She said that the ski slopes constructors had reached the bare rock when digging the pistes and later they had to create artificial surfaces so that the snow would stick.

“I do not ski there because I do not want to pay for a place where the rules are not kept. Many of my friends do not go there for skiing either,” Rakovska said.

Furthermore she said the fines imposed on Bansko resort reached 56 000 leva in total. “So what?” she said. “The same is happening in Panichishte (in Rila National Park Buffer Zone). Obviously the fines have no effect for such places and this leads to the multiplication of the same violations at other places as well,” Rakovska said.

On November 16 WWF Bulgaria said, in a media statement, that the Bansko ski slopes in the area of Chalin Valog are illegal. The reason they gave was that the permits issued by the Bulgarian Ministry of Environment and Water Affairs in 2001 expressly said that the Chalin Valog ski runs had to be re-cultivated. Instead, they were expanded and built further. WWF further said that ski lift Chalin Valog was constructed without an EIA decision.

The coalition of 17 environmental organisations, To Sustain the Nature in Bulgaria, including the WWF, informed the authorities about the violations from the construction of Chalin Valog ski runs during the beginning phase of the project in April 2007. Citizens and Save Pirin coalition representatives protested at the area in May and October 2007.

Representatives of European Commission DG Environment, Andrash Demeter and Ladislav Miko, also attended a check of the site earlier this year. “Then, when questioned in front of the Europeans whether Chalin Valog ski lift had EIA decisions and whether it was legal, Pirin National Park director Georgi Grancharov said he did not know but however it [the lift] was in the concessionaire’s [Ulen] investment programme,” the WWF statement said.