All Downhill From Here? Memories of Sheffield's Ski Village with Katie Young

On October 30th, 2013 I went to talk to Katie Young. Katie began visiting Sheffield Ski Village very shortly after it opened in 1988. Growing up, she could see it from her house on Bradley Street in Crookes, and said its prominence could have been a reason behind her wanting to go there. But it was her school that helped her cross the River Don and venture up into Parkwood Springs to go skiing. She tried her hand at snowboarding too, but found it too hard, and her friend broke his thumb, so she stuck to skiing.

All this changed when she was on holiday and learnt to snowboard on real snow in Europe. When she came back, she started snowboarding at the Ski Village again, this time progressing very quickly. So quickly in fact that she entered a number of competitions around the country and won most of them. So it’s not surprising that she got cherry-picked for the UK Junior Snowboarding Team. With Sheffield having more runs than any other dry ski slope in the UK, national competition finals were often held here. It was when Katie was competing on her home turf that she was offered this unique opportunity.

Katie Young at Sheffield Ski Village, circa 1996, courtesy of the Katie Young collection

Katie can remember the Ski Village when it was just ski runs and portacabins. Later on she got a job as a technician, getting a free lift pass and therefore unlimited use of the slope. She would go every day, getting a lift off her mum or catching the bus, until she learnt to drive and would drive there herself. She is still in touch with some of the friends she made during that time.

Sheffield Ski Village, circa 1996, courtesy of the Katie Young collection

These days however, if she wants to go snowboarding, she has to go further afield. In 2012, after a series of smaller fires, the Sheffield Ski Village was decisively burnt to the ground. She described a video she saw on Facebook, where some regulars made a ‘last descent’ of the slope following the fire. If you go there today it would be impossible to do this, as the matting has either been torn up or grown through with vegetation and the bottom of the slope is covered in debris and the charred remains of buildings.

Sheffield Ski Village today

Katie’s snowboarding career took her all over Europe, and she showed me some photographs of idyllic mountains, some skylarking in chalets during bad weather, and of course action shots of the Ski Village itself. Unfortunately however, whilst competing abroad, Katie launched off a kicker without enough speed to make the down ramp, landing on the flat and damaging her anterior cruciate ligament. She had an operation, and was kept on the team, but early on during her comeback she damaged it again and had to have another operation.

There seems to be an uncanny connection between her story and the story of the ski village. Both received decisive blows that took them out of the game without warning. Katie still snowboards now, but not at the level of when she was competing. Her life has opened up in new ways following her injury. There are stories from Parkwood residents about sledging down the estate streets (now covered over by the Ski Village development), and I’m sure people will sledge on those hills in years to come. And as for new directions, this is a hot topic when it comes to the Ski Village. Katie would like it to become an indoor slope like the one at Castleford. Other rumours abound. But something needs to be done with the site, as it has become one giant eyesore and a free-for-all fly-tipping site. Parkwood Springs has many changes approaching during the run up to the end of the ‘official’ tipping contract in 2018. Some, including the proactive Friends of Parkwood Springs group, are campaigning for it to become a country park. What would you like to see on the site?