Patrick Thorne The Snow Hunter

Indoor Snow Sports

Among his speciality areas within the wider snow holidays genre, Patrick has followed the development of indoor snow centres over the past four decades, matching the duration of his own career almost precisely.

Over the decades indoor snow centres have gone from a few locations in Europe, Japan and Australia with a grainy chemical goo to ski on rather than real snow, to more than 200 now having been constructed worldwide in more than 40 countries on six continents. Ever larger facilities are appearing with some on such a vast scale they have several kilometres of indoor snow runs and can host officially sanctioned ski races. Indoor snow quality has also improved dramatically.

About two thirds of indoor snow centres offer skiing and boarding, the remainder “real snow experiences” bringing snow to people where snow doesn’t arrive naturally, giving them the chance to see, touch and taste snow, and play in it, for the first time.

Patrick runs the IndoorSnowNews.com website, publishes a free bi-monthly newsletter, and for more than two decades has been building the planet’s encyclopedia of indoor snow centres, The World Indoor Snow Centres Guide, which is now approaching 600 pages long!