A man’s voice says: “The works began towards the end of spring…” Then boom! The first explosion comes before the drums roll, while debris and earth fly through the air. The heavy artillery arrives: excavators and trucks carve access roads and routes for ski pistes out of the slope. Ditches are dug, pipes laid. Not a scene from a war zone, but rather the promotional video for the French skiing area “Les2Alpes3600”. A total of 555,000 cubic metres of earth have been removed for a new piste so that beginners can also manage the run down to the valley. As it happens, more than half of all accidents occur away from the pistes: on ski lifts, in hotels, in bars or in restaurants, as the Sunday Times recently calculated for British visitors. www.youtube.com/watch?v=uVo2CW2I1mc (fr)