Absolute Alps Holidays Ski Blog

Our main delivery of wine arrived today and has been stored away ready for the winter ski season.

Relaxing with a glass of wine in the evening is a perfect way to recover from a busy day on the slopes, all included in the service of your ski holiday at Les Trois Canards.

We carefully select our red, white and rose wines to accompany and compliment our delicious evening meals. Often one of the highlights of our guests stay.

Chatel have produced a little video to commemorate the old Rochassons chair lift at Pre-la-Joux. Too much time spare time ??

Au revoir Rochassons… from Service Com Mairie de Châtel on Vimeo.

This year we will have ski boot warmers in the chalet so everyone can start the day with toasty warm feet, perfect for those cold winter mornings.

Down at the Pre-La-Joux ski slopes work is nearly finished on this years improvements. There are now snow cannons covering all the main slopes in that area “Snow Sure Chatel”, and a sparkling new “Rochassons” 6-man fast lift which has replaced the creaky old 2-man.

Bring on the snow, winter here we come!

After working many winter seasons and seeing lots of skiers on holiday I thought I might share a few of my observations about ski lessons.

Basically ski lessons are a good idea and a great investment with the aim to improving your enjoyment of your holiday.

It’s not only absolute beginners that can benefit from lessons, almost all abilities can improve with good instruction. The great thing is that the better your level the more you are able to get out of a lesson, for example an intermediate skier with plenty of experience who is willing to listen and wanting to improve will find a 2 hour lesson with a skilled instructor can produce instant results to their skiing. The fact they are experienced allows them to really take in the techniques the instructor is trying to get across.

Many people still imagine ski lessons to involve standing in a line listening to an instuctor shout “bend zee knees” in poor English, but that’s not the case nowadays with a little informed choice. A private instructor with lots of experience and recommendations can do wonders for your technique.

Ski holidays are not cheap and once you get here you should aim to get maximum enjoyment from your trip, I’ve seen many people who refuse to have lessons and spend the whole week stuck at the bottom of the mountain struggling with the beginner slopes. They often insist they are having a good time, but I’m sure some lessons would allow them to explore a lot more of the mountain and keep up with their friends – which would undoubtedly mean getting more enjoyment out of the whole trip. A few extra Euros spent on lessons would be well worth it.

Here in Chatel there are a wide variety of ski lessons available to suit all abilities, group sizes & wallets. There is either ski school groups or independent private lessons. If personally think privates are worth paying the extra, the guys are all very good and they are tailored better because of the smaller group. With a few people together they are quite economical.

I can always helps advise clients to ensure they get the most from their holiday.

The trees are all in full autumn colours are the moments and the next strong winds will probably see most of the leaves stripped from them.

Over the last month we’ve had 3 separate storms come through which have left snow on the mountains around us, and a few flurries have reached down into the resort. All the peaks are still white at the moment because its very chilly on the mornings now and despite blue skies with plenty of sunshine its not until after lunch its becoming warm.

The chalet is all set for the winter now, logs are all stacked, the grass has had its final cut, wines have been ordered and I’ve spent the last month varnishing the inside of the chalet.

I saw on the BBC news the other day they were talking about another cold winter and mentioning again Low Solar Activity, a favourite topic of mine – see previous posts.

All in all winter is coming and its time to book your ski trip, we still have a few rooms available over Christmas and New Year. Get in touch to organise your holiday.

This coming winter season we will have a brand new lift at Pre-La-Joux, the old Rochassons 2 man lift is at this very moment been removed and a brand new 6 man express lift will be installed in its place. Once this is complete all the main lifts at Pre-La-Joux will be the new express detachable type.

In addition to the new lift the final stage of the 4 year project to equip all the pistes at Pre-La-Joux with snow cannons will also be finished in the next few months. This has been a massive project with the creation of a huge new lake near the top of the mountain to feed all the new cannons.  This investment has already been very useful last season when all the pistes survived until the end of the season despite the poor snowfall in Europe last winter.

These investments ensure Chatel continues to provide world class skiing facilities in the Pre-La-Joux area, a highlight of the Portes du Soleil domain.

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.

The theme of this winter ski season seems to be cold and sunny, in fact I’m not sure when was the last time it wasn’t sunny for a majority of the day. Pretty much every morning is bright blue skies and very cold, for the last couple of weeks its been between -6°C & -10°C for the school run.
The last significant snowfall was back on the 10th of January, quite a while back, but the pistes are currently looking pretty good, they are all flat, firm and fast. All the main runs and lifts are open, the snow cannons have been worked pretty hard recently, although the avalanche blasters have been having a pretty quiet time.
All in all, don’t believe any negative grumblings about lack of snow, people are out enjoying the mountains in beautiful sunshine and having a great time.
Before you know it, people will be moaning its snowing too much and they can’t see anything, probably !!

The season is in full swing again, we had a very white Christmas. It snowed all day on Christmas Eve and into Christmas Day. Today on Boxing Day we have been treated to beautiful blue sky and sunshine, even if it was a little chilly. In fact its the first time in a few weeks that it’s been colder here than it has been in the UK.
The pistes are all looking and feeling superb, here we go again

The last couple of days have been very wintery in the Alps, this morning there was a good few inches of snow in Chatel. I think the snow line was down below 1000m, so I’d expect the tops of the mountains to have a fair amount of snow on them now.