Funny old ski season   May 11th, 2011

Well the season is well and truly over now with Spring in full flow in the village, but I can still see snow across the valley on the top pistes at Linga and Pre-La-Joux. In fact it felt like Summer had arrived around the end of March when we had a whole week of temperatures in the high twentys, very strange skiing weather ! Higher temperatures then many people had on Europe’s beaches recently at late Easter break.
The story of this season seemed to be people coming over from the UK expecting the snow conditions to be terrible only to the surprised with the great piste skiing on offer and going home having enjoyed a great weeks skiing and of course superb hospitality in our chalet.
But massive credit must be given to the Chatel piste management team, the final day of the lifts was the 25th April. A huge achievement when you consider how few snowfalls we had during the season, there where literally only a handful of big dumps. For the most of April there was only Chatel and Avoriaz operating, as all the other 10 Portes du Soleil ski stations where closed with most of them completely green slopes and no snow in sight.
The massive 4 year “Snow Sure” investment program which Chatel is about to complete this summer to ensure all the pistes in the Pre-La-Joux area have snow cannons defiantly paid dividends last winter, with all the main pistes open all season long. This technology combined with fact the Pre-La-Joux area has some of the highest pistes in the Portes du Soleil along with Avoriaz, plus the topography at Pre-La-Joux means the pistes face different directions so they don’t all suffer from too much sunshine at the same time.
The resort of Morzine was pretty much closed from the beginning of April as their highest pistes are only as high as the mid-station at Pre-La-Joux and as the majority of skiing is above this level we still had plenty of great skiing on offer.
Anyway, looking forward to a great Summer ahead and then plenty of snow next year.

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