306: Kitzbühel, Cat Skiing in Georgia, Brides-Les-Bains & Chemmy Alcott’s Olympics

We find out about one of Austria’s most famous ski resorts, Kitzbühel, plus go cat skiing in Georgia and consider if Brides-Les-Bains is the way to ski in Les 3 Vallées without breaking the bank.

We also have snow reports from Courchevel, Les 2 Alpes and the Via Lattea and an Olympic catch up with Chemmy Alcott.

Iain was joined in the studio by Anna Nirkow from Kitzbühel Tourism and freelance journalist Mike ‘The Snow’ Richards.

SHOW NOTES

Mike was last on the show in Episode 294, discussing skiing in Pra Loup (1:45)
Skiing on Hay Bluff in Wales (4:00)
Alex Armand from Tip Top Ski Coaching is in Les 2 Alpes (5:00)
Alex Irwin from YouTube’s ‘150 Days of Winter’ is in Courchevel (5:45)
James and Sinead from Sauze Online are in the Via Lattea (7:15)
This year was the 86th edition of the Hahnenkamm race in Kitzbühel (9:30)
Around 80,000 spectators attend across the three days of racing (10:30)
Every year there’s a slalom race as well (12:30)
Dave Ryding won in 2022 (13:30)
There’s a gondola in Kitzbühel with Ryding’s name on it (14:00)
You can visit the ‘starthaus’ at the top of the Streif (15:45)
The ski area has 233km across 90 pistes (16:45)
Bergbahn Kitzbühel is a regular winner of ‘World’s Best Ski Resort Company’ (17:00)
The KitzSkiWelt Tour offers 88km of skiing in the world’s longest ski safari (18:00)
Travel by train to Kitzbühel (20:00)
Cross country and ski touring options (20:45)
Anna’s favourite mountain huts include the Bärenbadalm, Melkalm, Rasmushof, Panorama Alm, Sonnenrast and BichlAlm (22:45)
And for apres ski try the Legendencafe and The Londoner (23:15)
Emily Sarsfield – Olympian & TNT Sport commentator – joined Iain for our Winter Olympic specials (25:00)
Guests included gold medal winners, Huw Nightingale and Charlotte Bankes, as well as Chemmy Alcott, Graham Bell, Ed Leigh, Eddie The Eagle
BBC presenter Chemmy Alcott shares her thoughts on the Games (25:30)
Zak, Luca and Freddy Carrick-Smith share their thoughts on the future (29:15)
An epic trip on a four-day Interrail from Rail Europe (31:00)
Iain stayed for the first time in Brides-Les-Bains, connected by the Olympe gondola directly to Meribel (32:00)
Mike talked about a trip to Guadari in Georgia in Episode 37 (33:30)
Mike booked with the Powder Project (36:00)
Bakhmaro is 1900m with cat served skiing up to 2750m (37:00)

Feedback
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Colin Tierney: “The joy of having to work is being able to record the Olympics and fast forward through the bits that don’t entertain me and Sweden (Episode303) sounds great.”

Richard Baker: “Listening to Episode 305 and I agree that Zoe Atkin may have deserved the silver”

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