Uludağ, Turkey

Ahmet Akpinar from TURKEY writes:

A snowboarder died last week in Uludag. He was riding from Maden Area close to the 2nd Area hotels. The security people did not start a proper search operation for him properly, although he asked help from his cell phone to his parents many times. As he was found he was only 2 km away from the hotel, and it was known for 12 hours that he was missing. There were 2 hospitals on the top but they didn't find a doctor in there. During travelling to the city for 1 hour, he died.

This is a total disaster for every parties involved in it. The hotel which did not take any safety at all, the search staff who are inexperienced, lack of material, lack of communication, missing health care and all the other factors we don't know at all.

Besides all the problems said here, the safety in Uludag is a general problem. The lift operators, usually unaware of that "the safety comes first" are unfriendly or like bored and the pistes are "out of control", there are almost no information signs, no limiting barriers at all. So it's like "riding in wild, wild west". You can see those wide & big snow trucks in the middle of the day in the middle of skiers and snowboarders, trying to escape from them, because the night might be too cold and require overtime (!) for them. In the 1st area people just go sightseeing in the pistes and they look to you like seeing "what are you doing in my way?"

The Uludag Hotels are managed by those people who want to make good money in short time, but they are doing a business, which they know nothing about it.

Everybody tend to pay for good quality, but quality for a ski-center does not mean that the rooms are clean and the food is good, there is no good organisation for people who want to make sports with safety and joy.

2009-01-23