Ads Past: Before ski lifts there were railways

The Grand Hotel in Mürren, in Switzerland’s Bernese Oberland, ran this advertorial in the 1926 edition of the British Ski Year Book. It promoted ski instruction and the Allmendhubelbahn funicular railway, which served 257 vertical meters (843 feet) of gentle beginner terrain. The railway, opened in 1912 to serve a toboggan slide, made its run in four minutes, leaving about every quarter of an hour. After carrying generations of new skiers, it closed in 1996 but was restored and reopened in 2000.

The Grand Hotel itself opened in 1874 to serve wealthy British travelers. It became the Swiss headquarters of the Ski Club of Great Britain, founded in 1903, and Arnold Lunn staged the first-ever timed slalom race here in 1921 and the first Alpine World Ski Championships in 1931. After World War II, the hotel closed due to competition from trendier resorts like St. Moritz, but it reopened as the Hotel Mürren Palace in 2024.

Elsewhere in the 1926 year book, the Central Hotel Wolter
in Grindelwald advertised its Scheidegg Railway, which opened
in 1875 and “spares the ski-runner over 2,000 feet of climbing.” —Seth Masia

Club Med and Skiing
Nancy Bouchard explores the influence of Club Med
and its introduction of the all-inclusive ski vacation,
first in Europe in the 1950s and expanding to North America in the ’80s.

The Not-So-Crazy Canucks
In the 1970s, the PWA Pro Ski Tour helped popularize racing in Canada as a strong alternative to the U.S. pro circuit.