THERE are lots of winter activities to choose from.
Bobsledding is a sport in which two teams sled through constructed obstacles. Made of artificial ice, it is composed of 15 curves and 1300 meters long. If you slide through this obstacle, your sled’s speed may reach up to 130 kilometers an hour. There are a dozen professional bobsledding competitions all over the world and these are the following: Igls in Austria, Calgary in Canada, La Plagne in France, Altenberg, Konigsee and Winterberg in Germany, Cesana and Cortina d’Ampezzo in Italy, Nagano in Japan, Lillehammer in Norway, St. Moritz in Switzerland, Lake Placid and Salt Lake City in the United States and Sigulda in Latvia. Bobsleigh obstacles are also used in professional luge competitions. The sleighs used in these competitions are made of light metals, steel runners and an aerodynamic composite body. For a sleigh with four crew, it must be 3.80 meters long.

Skiing is obviously gliding over snow with the use of a mechanical contraption called ski. Skiing used to be developed for transportation purposes across snow in the olden times but in contemporary ones, it is now used as leisure or even as a professional sport. There are three types of skiing – alpine skiing, Nordic skiing and telemark skiing. Alpine skiing uses long skis. Nordic skiing uses skis which must not touch the heel of the skier’s boots. Telemark skiing is the most daring of them all since only the toes of the boots are connected to the skis. Skiing is such a difficult and dangerous maneuver that numerous skiing experts have made themselves a fortune by being professional ski instructors. There are six basic techniques a skier needs to know – stern, parallel turn, carve turn, telemark turn, pivot turn and jump turn. They teach advanced carving, bump skiing and other newer techniques. There is one particular emerging trend, hiphop skiing, where hiphop dancing skills are embedded in skiing techniques. Persons with disabilities can ski too by using contraptions such as sit skis. More types of skiing include backcountry skiing, biathlon, cross country skiing, heliskiing and skijoring. In skijoring, your ski is pulled by a dog while in heliskiing, the terrain is reached by a helicopter instead of a ski lift.

Instead of a sled, snowboarding uses a board strapped to one’s feet. It’s basically similar to skiing.

A more conventional skating activity which can occur in most urban areas like malls is ice skating. Ice skating is famous even in tropical countries like the Philippines where snow can hardly be felt even in mountainous areas like Baguio and Bukidnon. The Philippines’s Mall of Asia hosts the largest ice skating rink in that part of the world.

Before ice skating became a professional sport, scientists went into excruciating experiments whether this event is dangerous or not. They found out that ice has a minimum kinetic friction of -7 degrees Celsius. Ice skating rinks at controlled temperatures maintain that. Sports based on ice skating include ice hockey and figure skating.

A different kind of winter vacation would be to combine winter sports and improving your language skills: sprachreisen englisch Cork.