Custom artwork is not automatically meaningful just because somebody’s name has been added to it. The strongest ski commissions usually begin somewhere deeper: with the places, people and memories that actually matter.

A favourite resort. The chalet a family has returned to for twenty years. The piste where someone first learned to ski. The bar that became part of every holiday. The station where two people met. Even the bit of mountain where someone came spectacularly unstuck and acquired a story that still gets retold every winter. That is when a piece of ski art stops being decoration with a name added to it and starts becoming a record of someone’s skiing life.

Frozen Underground has produced personalised and bespoke artwork for individuals, families, chalets, hotels and ski businesses for many years. Some commissions begin with an existing Network Map and add only a handful of carefully chosen details. Others involve new stations, altered routes, custom wording or an entirely reworked version of the network.

The point is not to add as much as possible - it is to add the right things.

​Before deciding where a name should go or which line should change colour, it helps to think about what the artwork is actually supposed to represent. Perhaps it is a wedding or anniversary present based around the resorts a couple has skied together. Maybe it is for a chalet that has become the centre of years of family holidays. It could mark a milestone birthday, retirement, favourite mountain, ski club or business. That story gives the commission its direction.

If the important thing is a family’s skiing history, the artwork might include resorts visited over several decades. If it is for an apartment, the property itself might become a "station". If it is a gift, one small private joke may matter more than ten additional destinations.
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The best commissions are rarely the ones with the most changes. They are the ones where every change has a reason to be there.

No, a commission can begin with something as simple as: “I’d like to include our chalet and the resorts we have skied as a family.” From there, the useful information is usually straightforward: names, places, wording, logos where relevant, perhaps photographs or references if a particular property or business needs to be represented.

So, you do not need to arrive with a finished design. In fact, it is often better not to, as part of the commissioning process is deciding what belongs in the artwork, where it should sit and how much can be added without damaging the balance of the original design.

The Network Maps are the most flexible starting point because their visual language naturally allows new places and stories to become part of the system. A new station might represent anything from a favourite resort, hotel, chalet or home to a ski bar, restaurant or even a person.

​New routes can be introduced. Existing lines can be adjusted. Taglines, logos and selected graphics can be incorporated where appropriate.

Some of the most memorable additions are deliberately personal. Frozen Underground has previously created station names based on stories such as Louise’s Wipeout or Phil’s Pit Stop - details that would mean very little to anyone else, but immediately make sense to the people involved.

For some commissions, however, the brief is much larger. We have also produced artwork for ski businesses and organisations. One example was a special version created for Inghams, where the network was reworked to promote more than 90 of the company’s ski resorts.
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So the scale can range from one very personal station to an artwork that has been substantially rebuilt.

Frozen Underground custom artwork can be produced in different formats depending on the brief. The current standard custom options include a 70 × 50 cm print on art paper and an 80 × 60 cm aluminium artwork, with other dimensions or materials considered where appropriate.
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Art paper works well where framing is part of the intended presentation, while aluminium gives the artwork more physical presence and is particularly suited to chalets, apartments, hotels and contemporary interiors where the piece is intended to work as a larger statement on the wall.
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If the commission is unusual in scale or material, it can simply be discussed as part of the brief.

Most custom artwork requests fall within the standard pricing structure:

70 × 50 cm on art paper — £195
80 × 60 cm on aluminium — £350

More detailed work will cost more where the design requires substantial alteration, additional artwork or an unusual format. For that reason, complex commissions are quoted individually.
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A short description of what you have in mind is usually enough to assess the scope of the commission and provide an appropriate quote. More complex ideas can then be discussed in a little more detail before any work begins.

The process is simple: you explain what you would like the artwork to represent and provide the relevant names, places or other details. The scope and price are agreed before the design work begins.

From there, the artwork is developed and any necessary refinements will be discussed before production.
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You do not need to supply a perfectly organised design brief - you just need to know what matters.

A standard ski map can remind you of a place.  A custom one can remind you of your place in it.

That difference is what makes the best commissions meaningful. The artwork becomes connected to a family history, a property, a business or a collection of ski memories that nobody else has in quite the same combination.

And that is really the test. If the artwork makes someone say, “That’s us,” then the customisation has done its job.

MAKE THE NETWORK YOUR OWN
Tell us the places, people or stories you would like to include and we can help turn them into a
Frozen Underground commission.

​See examples of personalised Network Maps, chalet artwork and bespoke ski commissions.

There are plenty of ways to represent skiing on a wall. Mountain photography can capture the scale of the landscape. Vintage posters can evoke another era. Piste maps can instantly bring a particular ski area to mind.

A ski network map, however, does something different: rather than concentrating on one mountain or one resort, it brings the wider skiing world together.

France meets Spain. Switzerland connects with Italy. Familiar names sit alongside resorts you have yet to visit. Routes cross, regions meet and a lifetime of skiing begins to look like part of one much bigger system.
That is the idea behind the Frozen Underground Central Network. It takes ski destinations from across Europe and beyond and reimagines them as stations on one enormous underground network. Hop on the Tube in London and arrive in no time in the French Alps!

And once it is on the wall, the fun is not simply in looking at it - it is in exploring it.

​For many people, that exploration begins in exactly the same way - by looking for the places they know.

One of the most satisfying things about a map is recognition. You see a familiar name, then another, and suddenly the artwork begins to connect with your own experiences.

Perhaps you look first for somewhere you have skied for years, or for a place you visited last winter. Then your eye starts travelling along the lines. One destination leads to another; a country changes; an interchange appears; a place you know sits surprisingly close to somewhere you have always meant to visit.

That process is part of what makes the Central Network more than a decorative map. It allows each viewer to bring their own skiing history to the artwork.

Someone who has spent decades travelling through the Alps may see a trail of holidays spread across the artwork. Another may recognise only a handful of places but immediately start noticing the ones they would like to add. A family might stand in front of it comparing where everyone has been. A chalet owner may see the resorts their guests talk about every winter.
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The network itself stays the same, but what people see in it depends entirely on their own experience.

The Central Network is deliberately different from a conventional ski resort map. It is not there to show the layout of pistes or lifts, and it does not attempt to reproduce the geography of one particular destination.

Its purpose is broader: the current Central Network contains 192 ski resort stations, including 27 additions for the 2026/27 season. Rather than presenting those places as separate destinations, the network brings them together through the visual language of a transport system.

That makes it possible to see skiing as a connected world rather than a collection of isolated resorts - all destinations become part of the same system. In that sense, the Central Network is closer to a visual map of skiing itself - an artwork designed  for recognition and discovery, whilst bringing this vast array of resorts into an artistic  order.

Skiing is full of connections. Some destinations share ski areas. Some cross national borders. Some are linked by railways or wider regions. Others are connected by history, culture or the way skiers move between them over the years. The Central Network takes that sprawling ski world and gives it a structure.

The most interesting maps rarely give everything away at once. At first, you notice the overall design. Then the lines. Then the station names. After that, smaller details begin to emerge. That sense of discovery has become increasingly important in the latest Central Network editions.

The Central Network [Classic Edition] presents the complete 192-station network in A3 format. The larger Central Network [Discovery Edition] adds three further details to the artwork: mountain railways, significant night skiing and cross-border skiing. The Central Network [Gallery Edition], produced as an 80 × 60 cm aluminium artwork, goes further again with selected cross-border ski-area names, historical milestones, skiing records and other discoveries.

The point is not simply that one version is larger than another. The larger formats create room for more information which has been chosen because it adds another layer to this artistic skiing world. They also give viewers a reason to stop, read and perhaps tell someone else something they did not know.
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That is exactly the kind of behaviour Frozen Underground is designed to encourage - artworks that give the owner something to recognise, remember, discover and talk about.

One of the strengths of the Central Network is that it does not dictate what the viewer should care about.

Someone who mainly skis in France will focus on one section, whereas someone who loves Austria will probably head elsewhere. A skier who has spent years travelling between countries may trace a much broader route through the artwork.

There is also a difference between recognising the places you have already been and noticing those you have not. That makes the Central Network part memory and part possibility. You can look at it as a record of where skiing has already taken you, or as a reminder of how much there is still to discover.

That personal relationship becomes stronger again when the artwork is customised. Frozen Underground has a long history of producing bespoke and personalised work: names, chalets, businesses and other meaningful details can become part of a commission where appropriate, making the network feel even more connected to the person or place displaying it.

A good ski network map should work on more than one level. From across the room, it should have enough presence to stand as a piece of art. Up close, it should offer something more: familiar places, unexpected connections and details that encourage you to keep looking.

That is where the Central Network earns its place. It brings together 192 ski destinations in one coherent design, but the experience of viewing it is personal. One person may immediately find the places they know best, while another may start spotting countries or destinations they still want to visit. Someone else may simply enjoy following the lines and discovering what lies along them.

The map becomes more interesting the longer you spend with it, because it is not trying to tell one fixed story. It gives the viewer a framework and lets their own skiing memories and interests do the rest.
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And that, perhaps, is what makes it work so well on a wall: it is both a finished piece of artwork and something that continues to invite another look.

FIND YOUR PLACE ON THE NETWORK
Explore the Frozen Underground Central Network in three editions, from the complete A3 Classic Edition, through the larger Discovery Edition, to the 80 × 60 cm aluminium Gallery Edition.

Wherever there are mountains, it seems there are tunnels running beneath them. Intensive studies have revealed that some of the largest subterranean routes were originally created several thousand years ago by the early Yetis in order to make their journeys across mountainous terrain much easier.

For reasons yet unknown, it appears as though the tunnels became abandoned and seemingly forgotten somewhere between 2000 BFU (Before Frozen Underground) and 2200 BFU.

Their rediscovery started in the summer of 1567 in the quiet lane of Pulverturmweg in the north of Kitzbühel. On 7 July, engineers were digging foundations for the first Hahnenkamm ski lift. It was to be driven by a rudimentary steam turbine (described by Taqi al-Din in 1551) and needed some serious foundations. Without warning, the base of the hole collapsed, and it was clear they had broken through into some kind of cavern underneath. A search party was sent down and they found a tunnel which led upwards at a steep angle towards the north-east. It eventually emerged underneath a hütte on Waldhofweg owned by Anton “Gefahr” Lebkuchen.

Fun Fact: The now once again abandoned (for extreme safety reasons) Lebkuchen Line holds the records for having both the steepest slope and the shortest track length of any Frozen Underground Line.


Anton suggested to the engineers from the Kitzbühel Gemeinde that they could work together, and that his hütte could be the entrance of a subway system taking guests down via “trains” to the newly installed Hahnenkamm steam-driven rope lift. As well as developing this line, Anton set to work researching the surrounding area and, finding tunnels everywhere, realised the potential of taking people skiing to other distant places: The Frozen Underground was born.

Back in Kitzbühel, less than six months later, the first ever Frozen Underground line was opened on 2 January 1568. Then, the wooden carts of the Lebkuchen Line, driven by gravity alone and working (not surprisingly) just one way, took winter sports enthusiasts from Kitzbühel North to Kitzbühel North-West, through just 40 metres of tunnel.

But what an experience, as the line dropped at an angle of 48 degrees! The buffers at the destination were well prepared snow-bags, but needless to say the arrival was always fairly thrilling. The only written comment on file from a passenger dates from March 1572. Upon his arrival he remarked: ‘Shiver mi timbers, mi ski pants are damp!”

The trains ran for more than 100 years until 1672, when the expansion of the ski area with many more ski lifts made the line redundant.

More recent excavations at Kitzbühel North-West have since revealed a very impressive first aid station and a bar, as well as the bottom station of the also disused Hahnenkamm rope lift.

Tours of the Lebkuchen Line can be arranged at: www.frozenunderground.com