Absolute Alps Holidays Ski Blog

There’s been plenty of new development and replacement work to the ski lifts in the Portes du Soleil again this summer, here’s a run down of the shiny new ski-lift facilities you’ll be able to find for winter 2015.

Firstly here’s a link to the newly issued Portes du Soleil piste map for 2015, which has been updated to show the new lifts and pistes for the coming season. Check out the pink “NEW” stars showing the recent upgrades!

Chatel & Pre-la-Joux Area

Starting with the local ski area.

New Ski-Lifts & Pistes between Linga and Super-Chatel

As mentioned in my earlier post the long talked about and anticipated link between the Chatel’s two ski areas is finally being built.

The latest updates to this are:

• Both lifts will be the high speed detachable type, the initial plan was for one of the lifts to be a refurbished older style slow lift but there will now be a brand new 6 person detachable up to Super-Chatel called “Portes du Soleil” and a refurbished 4 person detachable going to Linga called “Gabelou”.
• The blue piste from Linga to Gabelou has been totally reshaped from the old windy track into a broad and fairly straight piste, making it easy for beginners to return to Chatel.
• The project is reportedly currently running a little behind schedule and is reported looking at a January opening. There has been an official announcement saying it will definitely be open this winter but the opening date has not been confirmed yet.

New Magic Carpets for Chatel

• The beginner rope pull drag lifts at Super-Chatel and Pre-la-Joux have both been removed and are currently being replaced with new Magic Carpet style lifts. This will be a massive improvement for all the beginners in Chatel, making it much easier to use the nursery slopes. I don’t think anybody will miss the old rope pull, apart from whose who liked the feeling of having their arms pulled out their sockets!

Another little improvement for beginners at Pre-la-Joux is they have reshaped the piste which runs from the main car park & the Perdrix Blanche restaurant back down towards the new magic carpet. The first section of this nearest the restaurant had an off camber turn that could draw beginners into the dreaded orange netting, leaving them embarrassed, tangled and sliding down towards the river! Hopefully no more of that.

Avoriaz & Super-Morzine Area

Big works have been happening here all summer to replace 2 key lifts linking Avoriaz to Morzine

Upgrading Proclou lift to 6 person

The Proclou lift is always very popular because it serves the huge and gentle beginner piste that runs down from Avoriaz towards Super-Morzine, even thou it was a 4 person detachable there could often be large queues at the bottom. This upgrade should sort that problem out, allowing the beginners to keep cruising around the big motorway blue and all the through traffic heading from Morzine back to Avoriaz.

Upgrading Séraussaix lift to 6 person

The upgrade of this lift from an old style slow 4 person to the latest 6 person should really help the Super-Morzine area get some more traffic. The previous slow lift was a real drag to use, but the new lift will give rapid access to Super-Morzine and the top has been repositioned a little higher to enable direct skiing across to the Zore pistes.

Cutting out the need to descend to button lift and back up to Zore. A great help to beginners because the whole Super-Morzine area has some lovely wide blue pistes which are great for gaining confidence and perfecting your turns.

Plus one of my favourite restaurants is at the bottom of the Zore piste, La Grenouille du Marais

As always get in touch with Absolute Alps and we can help organise your next Portes du Soleil ski holiday.