Absolute Alps Holidays Ski Blog

Calling the Alta Badia valley beautiful is an euphemism. And to describe its beauty here is a difficult task. You should really visit it yourself to discover the infinite forms of this dolomitic land. The tradition accounts this as one of the first places where winter sports started. It is easy to imagine how  developed and specialized the touristic offer of hotels is here.

Trentino is the ideal place for trekking or biking, or to try soft activities such as Nordic walking, yoga and outdoors exercises.
Read the rest of this entry »

The Criterium du Dauphine will be arriving in Chatel next weekend for the 8th and final stage.

This is one of Europe’s big annual road cycling races, and many of the Tour de France teams use it as a warm-up for the big event. Being in a mountainous area the race is usually won by a climbing specialist, and often features several of the most famous climbing stage from Le Tour.

This year the Dauphine is made up of a 1 short prologue stage around the town of Grenoble followed by 7 full stages, and covers a total distance of 1,052 kilometres. Starting Sunday 3rd June in Grenoble and finishing on Sunday 10th June in Chatel.

There are 22 teams and 175 riders running this year, with some big names including Brady Wiggins, Cadel Evans & Andy Schleck to name a few. Obviously I’ll be cheering on team Sky and Brady Wiggins (one of only 3 riders from GB), hopefully he should be in the running for winning the race.

Hopefully the weather will be fine, last year in April Chatel hosted a stage from the Tour de Romandie and after 3 weeks of glorious weather it rained all day when the tour arrived. This year Brady Wiggins won the 2012 66th Tour de Romandie, hope that is a good sign for next weekend!

While the European Alps are best known for winter sports, there is tremendous scope for summer fun too. Alpine towns like Chamonix and Interlaken are almost as busy during the warmer months. Visitors come to enjoy stunning views (the high peaks are icebound all year), to walk mountain trails that become difficult or impassable in winter, and to experience the wildlife, food, and culture of the Alpine region.

For adventure lovers there is plenty to get excited about, rock climbing on the valley crags, Alpine climbing above, white water rafting and kayaking on snowmelt-filled rivers, and some of the best mountain biking and road cycling in the world.
Read the rest of this entry »

Nowadays there is great pressure on everyone from individuals to companies to carry out their business in as eco-friendly way as possible, and the mountain ski resort of Chatel is doing its part to try to keep its environment as healthy as possible.

Chatel has signed up to the Sustainable Development Charter to commit to making sustainable development their central organising principle, which has produced the following initiatives.
Read the rest of this entry »

After a couple of weeks hard work I’m pleased to reveal the new look for the Absolute Alps website. A little sad to see the old site retired as it has served us well for the past 7 years, but it was time to freshen up the image.

Here’s to another great 7 years

It hasn’t snowed for over a week now and the sun has been shining in Chatel for most of the time, maybe spring has arrived again. We had a taster of spring back in March but winter definitely made a sustained comeback in April.

Snow tires and ski rack are off the car now, bring on the sunshine. Although forecasting rain coming for the rest of the week, at least it might wash some of the snow away in preparation for the summer biking season.

The ski lifts closed in the Portes du Soleil on Sunday, which is an absolute shame because the mountain is still fully loaded with snow. On the final day we where treated to 30 cms of fresh powder and sunny skies. For the past 2 weeks it has been powder skiing almost every day, it has snowed most nights and then had sunny spells during the daytime.

As I mentioned in my previous post it’s been an excellent season, there will be a many people who will remember this year for their superb ski holidays.

It’s still snowing today down to the resort level, at this rate its going to be a quite a while until the mountain is suitable for mountain biking and I expect it will be a very muddy start to the summer biking season.

All in all it’s been a very good ski season in Chatel and the Portes du Soleil, late season has been fun too with a mix of conditions.

The start of March was really warm with fantastic spring skiing to be had on the off piste after it have softened in the sun, then mid-month we were treated to an unpredicted 40cms of fresh powder for a few days. I always love it when the forecast says a maximum of 10cms and you wake up in the morning to over a foot of fresh snow.  A couple of the best days skiing of the season.

More sunshine for the end of March, before a slightly disappointing rainy first week of April. Although the rain did mainly come in the night so although the slopes where slushy in the daytime at least there wasn’t too much skiing in the rain.

But we’ve had a little bit of snow since and the pistes are in great shape again, plus a fair bit of snow forecast in the next few days.  So we’ll see what turns up but there’s still potential for a last bit of fresh powder this season.

A bit of a scorching week on the slopes this week, with temperatures reaching 26°C in the village. It’s amazing the amount of snow that has melted around the chalet this week, probably about a foot of snow has melted away from the garden.

Still loads of snow on the mountain from the massive falls earlier in the season, and it forecast to cool down again next week with a little snowfall to refresh the pistes.

It’s been a busy last couple of weeks in the resort with all the school holidays, should be a little quieter for the next few weeks before busy again at the end of March for Easter.

The Siberian super cold air has finally gone and conditions are fantastic on the mountain now with lots of sun and deep deep snow everywhere.

It’s been a real pleasure to go out in sunny and relativity warm conditions (compared to the previous 3 weeks), the pistes are all in excellent shape and the off-piste is good fun too.

This February has not been as busy as previous years, the main UK school holidays were last week and it was a long way off as busy as usual. The main car parks at Pre-la-Joux have not been totally rammed which is usually the case in school holidays. Defiantly a sign of people being careful with their money.

Not much snow forecast for the coming week so time to get the sun cream out and enjoy the snow.

We still have a few spaces left for late March and April, get in touch for get some great ski deals