Ski Slope Lighting news

[Jan Hollan <jhollan@amper....muni.cz>]

> Jan,
>
>             I was researching 'lighting practices' for ski slopes and ran
> across some dialogue from 2002 where you were involved with identifying
> safety standards specific to ski slope applications.  After 10 years, I was
> surprised that this was the most comprehensive discussion on applying
> lighting for this type of application.   I was thrilled you shared your
> experience.
>
> I am very interested to understand what lighting requirements were put in
> place, and if any new developments in safety requirements/standards occurred
> since your original involvement.
>
>             I appreciate any information you are able to share.
>
> Much appreciated,
>
> Jay Marshall, LC
>
> Principal | ON2 Solutions

Jay,

I'm glad you are interested in this issue. And of course, I'm looking 
forward to your research results.

After my initial correspondence from 2002 and 2003 as given in the letter 
archive

  http://amper.ped.muni.cz/jenik/letters/ski/ ,

 I made quite a lot of work in 2005-2006 for the oldest Czech National 
park (Krnonoše, Riesengebirge) regarding the influence of ski slope 
lighting. Detailed reports in Czech were the result, accompanied with 
original data and scripts for processing them. Some rudimentary English 
info on it is within the reports below:

  http://amper.ped.muni.cz/light/ida/2005report.html

   chapters
  National Park at Night research
  Tolerable ski slope lighting

  http://amper.ped.muni.cz/light/ida/2006report.html
   chapter
  National Park at Night

(there are pdf versions of the reports to the IDA too in the directory 
http://amper.ped.muni.cz/light/ida/ )

The main message is still the same: twice full Moon is completely enough 
for skiing at night, if glare is suppressed as much as possible. And, as 
mentioned in the report from 2005, such lighting, excellently targeted, 
might be compatible with nature protection.

Of course, warm-white LED lamps could now easily solve all technical 
barriers for such wise lighting, when tailored perfectly each for its 
position, and when dimmed if there is but very little use of the slope.

The ski slope investigated in 2006, Protez (Protěž, Prot\v{e}\v{z}), has 
fully shielded luminaires, which helps a lot. However, the average 
illuminance is about 50 lx, a true overkill. The consequences reach very 
far indeed. One of them is, the ski slope serves as a giant billboard 
attracting people from towns far south... As the skiing business was not 
inclined to use far lower illuminances, the National Park decided no more 
projects like that can be allowed in future.

As for the safety requirements/standards, the situation is simple: ski 
slope is no road. Nobody is responsible for it. The very business is 
transporting people up the hill. What they do when skiing down, where they 
ski, that's solely their responsibility. If they would be shy to ski under
natural moonlight, they can avoid it easily.

Moreover, returning home from trips made with cross-country skis over the 
mountains, happens commonly at early or even late night, as winter days 
are short. Skiing down any skislope, if it is not icy, is comfortable 
compared to riding down through a forest... I've a lot of experience in 
that. No moonlight and no artificial lighting is needed. Of course, proper 
caution is. As always.


Thank you for the question -- I'll put this letter into the above 
mentioned letter archive, to make it a lot more useful:

  http://amper.ped.muni.cz/jenik/letters/ski/

---------

In a broader context, on all artificial lighting, I've made some new
contributions in 2012. There is a declaration and background for it 
(abstracts and lecture slides) within

  http://amper.ped.muni.cz/light/declaration/

 and an English text mostly on measurement

  http://amper.ped.muni.cz/light/texty_pdf/quantify_light_disruptor.pdf

 with the slides containing some useful hyperlinks being the top one 
(dated 2013, due to some later  corrections) within

  http://amper.ped.muni.cz/light/lectures/


with best regards,
 Jenik

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                             Jan Hollan, Ph.D.

CzechGlobe - Global Change Research Centre of the Acad. Sci. Czech Rep.

AdMaS - Advanced Materials, Structures and Technologies Centre 
of the Brno University of Technology

			           home:
Lipová 19, 602 00 Brno                         fix. +420 5 43 23 90 96
                            mob. +420 606 073 562

             volunteer of the Ecological Institute Veronica
Panská 9, 602 00 Brno, Czechia                  http://www.veronica.cz

e-mail: hollan@ped....cz              http://amper.ped.muni.cz/jenik
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