Serbia’s Mt. Kopaonik ski area has a new four star hotel his winter, the Angela. The hotel has been created by the MK Group from the merged Zve?an and Ras buildings.

The new hotel is part of an 8 million Euro spend by the MK Group on reconstruction and modernisation of the whole tourist complex at the mountain.

The refurbished Grand Hotel will include 75 fully modernised rooms and two new presidential suites with the Aperitiv Bar, Havana Bar, and the Garden Club Restaurant all redesigned.

The building will have higher energy efficiency with power saving and heating improvements, as well as new lifts, restaurant and kitchens.

The new wellness and spa centre, Grand Oaza, covering 2,200 square metres has also been created and there are also new modern indoor children playgrounds, an eight-line bowling centre, fitness facilities and a business centre.

The giant French Paradiski area that encompasses 20 resort villages which are part of the resorts of les Arcs, la Plagne and Peisey Vallandry, is encouraging skiers and boarders to think outside the snowbox in 2010 and consider trying one of the numerous adrenalin-pumping, side-splitting and quirky sports they offer besides downhill skiing and boarding.

Not for the faint hearted, Paradiski offers the more adventurous the chance to experience bobsleighing on France’s only Olympic bobsleigh run, ski-joering, ice climbing, snow rugby, speed-flying, watersliding and much more.

With the Bobsleigh run at la Plagne, you shoot down the 1.5km Olympic bobsleigh run either in a four man ‘bob-raft’ at 80kph, a ‘mono-bob’ with speeds exceeding 90kph, or go for the awesome 120kph ‘taxi-bob’ steered by a professional driver.

Paradiski is the only ski area in Europe with a special ski-joering course where skiers sign up for a unique horse-drawn skiing experience that is an age-old Scandinavian tradition .

Ice Climbers can scale the heights of Europe’s only 22 metre artificial ice tower in Champagny le Haut. There are 26 different routes that are suitable for intermediate climbers and professionals.

If you’re in resort on St Patrick’s Day you can take to the pistes at an altitude of 2,300 metres for a game of snow rugby on a pitch approved by the French Rugby Federation. Then battle it out in the final at the end of the day in the centre of the Vallandry resort.

Finally speed-flying is a thrilling combination of skiing and paragliding you can try is Les Arcs ( www.alerion.fr)

To end the day put on your skis and take a run up and attempt to cross a 12-metre long swimming pool situated next to the Altipost high-altitude restaurant. What’s more, watersliding is free of charge and to add to the fun you can place bets on who will sink first.

If you do still want to squeeze in some regular skiing and boarding you’ll find Paradiski has 425km of runs divided in to 236 runs, a 2050m vertical, two peaks at over 3,000 m, 153 km of cross country trails, two snowparks, five boardercross courses and two half-pipes.

The WWF has published a lengthy document at: www.panda.org/?184562/Ski-area-plans-threaten-Europes-last-untouched- detailing their belief that plans for new skiing areas in the region around the Carpathian Mountains and the Balkans threaten to harm major protected areas that house some of Europe’s last remaining untouched wilderness.

The document highlights proposed new ski areas and existing resort ski areas expansions in Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Ukraine.

The thrust of the document is that environmental protection laws in place are either too weak or side-stepped anyway in the drive for commercial profits,

“In theory, potential conflicts between nature conservation and development – including for ski tourism – should be mediated by procedures such as Environmental Impact Assessments and the European Union’s Article 6 of the Habitats Directive, which provide a system for evaluating potential impacts on nature and identifying solutions and measures to mitigate negative impacts. In practice, however, these safeguards are of limited effect, and in the face of intense pressure from economic and political forces, nature conservation is often given short shrift.” the report states.

The WWWF notes that the Carpathian Mountains are Europe’s last great wilderness area – a bastion for large carnivores, with some two-thirds of the continent’s populations of brown bears, wolves and lynx. They are also home to the greatest remaining reserves of old growth forests outside of Russia.

“It is striking how little climate change and sustainability appear to be entering calculations for many of the new ski areas,” said Andreas Beckman, Director of WWF Danube-Carpathian Programme. “Already, rising temperatures and decreased precipitation and snow cover is causing problems for many facilities, with some poor recent ski seasons.”

Erika Stanciu, WWF Danube-Carpathian Programme, Forest and Protected Areas Team Leader highlighted existing ski areas she believes have broken international environmental protection legislation, such as Bansko in Bulgaria.

“We can all avoid ski areas that do not comply with basic criteria for environmental safeguards and legislation”, she said. “For example, Bansko, in the heart of Pirin National Park in Bulgaria, is a popular ski destination that has become infamous for being the first of a series of illegal ski developments in Bulgarian protected areas. Half of the ski runs in Bansko have no environmental permits, while those ski runs which do have permits have violated each requirement of the Environmental Impact Assessment decision. These violations include for example the width of ski runs – instead of the permitted 30m they actually are 60 to 100m wide. The European Commission has initiated penalty procedures against Bulgaria because of violations of environmental law in the case of Bansko.”