Beskid Sport Arena

Located almost at the end of the Biła valley, Beskid had long been known as a fairly demanding slope, operating here with a T-bar as early as the late '70s, when it belonged to WOSiR, the regional sports and recreation centre in Bielsko. In the late '90s, starved of investment, it went into decline and was eventually closed. At the start of the second decade of the 21st century, the site of the old lift, together with its pistes, was bought by PBC, a limited company from Katowice, which began building one of the most modern ski resorts in Poland here. Opening date: December 2016. The "backbone" of the resort will be a 6-seater detachable chairlift made by the Slovak company Tatralift, with heated seats and weather hoods. The lift is 800 metres long with a vertical rise of 240 metres and a capacity of 2,400 people per hour. The ride up will take about 3 minutes. There will also be 3 button lifts (one of them detachable) and a 50 m magic carpet for the youngest, covered by a wind shield along its whole length. Eventually the resort will have 6 pistes with a total length of about 4 km. Piste no. 2, with a button lift and a magic carpet, is set aside as a comfortable slope for the youngest skiers and learners. The main piste will be blue run no. 1, about 1,200 m long, also adapted for downhill biking in summer. More advanced skiers will have two red pistes: no. 3, a 300-metre slalom slope with a detachable button lift, and no. 4, the "old" Beskid piste, now heavily reprofiled and widened, and so changed beyond recognition. Piste no. 5 will be a classic slalom piste with maximum gradients of up to 45%. Its parameters allow FIS homologation for slalom in all categories and for giant slalom in the youth categories. A notable point is that in future the owners plan to install professional floodlighting on piste no. 5 suitable for television broadcasts. It would be the first slope of its kind in Poland. Piste no. 6, about 400 metres long, will have its own lift and will be used for training and amateur races. A highlight of the main blue piste, and of the whole resort, will be a 50-metre tunnel allowing skiers to pass safely under black piste no. 5. A further attraction is the TatraBob automatic toboggan run, open in both winter and summer. The run will be about 250 metres long, with a maximum speed of 1.5 m/s. It is located by the top station of the chairlift. Nearby, a training slope with a short button lift is covered with plastic matting (igelit), so you can ski even when there is no snow cover. Snow on the pistes will be secured by a fully automatic snowmaking system from the Polish company SuperSnow, which in recent years has competed successfully with well-known brands not only on price but also on quality. The system includes 30 fixed snow cannons controlled by weather stations (twelve in total), permanently connected by underground pipelines. Two reservoirs have been built to secure water for snowmaking. The lower one, underground, holds 1,000 cubic metres and is located by the valley station building. The far more spectacular upper surface reservoir holds 10,000 cubic metres and also has an aeration and cooling system. The resort also has a modern Snobom machine that can make snow at above-zero temperatures, so the season opening on schedule in the upper part of the resort is practically a hundred percent guaranteed. The valley station mainly houses the chairlift equipment: the drive station, technical infrastructure, boarding platforms for skiers and garages for the piste bashers. For skiers it is the gateway to the resort: here you will find the ticket offices, toilets, ski hire and service shop, ski school, first aid point and customer service office. There will also be a restaurant with an outdoor terrace, from which the lower sections of the pistes look splendid, and with a glazed view onto the lift platform. The top station of the lift will house a restaurant, toilets, a ticket office, a mountain rescue (GOPR) post and a small mountain hotel. Both buildings are to be simple, modern blocks with contemporary interior design and plenty of glazing. The resort has 6 car parks, two on the investor's land and four on leased State Treasury land. All parking will be free except for the monitored car park no. 1, right by the valley station. This arrangement is used in many places in Europe: if you use the free car park, you have to walk a little; if you want convenience and to drive right up to the ticket office, you have to pay for it.