Absolute Alps Holidays Ski Blog

Most people in Northern Europe are currently experiencing an icy blast of cold air flowing south from the Arctic, we had snow down to about 100m above the village at the weekend and tomorrow our first blanket of winter snow is due to fall over all the village.
So time for my yearly winter French Alps snow prediction, as the weather has cooled over the last month the annual invasion of big black spiders has taken place. This year we had a record count of 4 big ones caught in the bath at one time, which I’m fairly confident signifies a very snowy winter.
But if you want more scientific approach I’ve found these couple of related BBC News articles Low solar activity link to cold UK winters & Solar surprise for climate issue.
Both suggesting the currently observed extended Solar minimum could have been responsible for the last couple of cold winter we’ve experienced and suggesting this trend could continue for another few years.
So I’m predicting that winter will be cold & snowy with lots of great skiing to be had.

This last weekend brought a little reminder that winter is coming. We had a dusting of snow on the tops of the mountains and the drop in temperature produced a syncronised colour change in the trees, which are all looking very Autumnal now.
Another summer has definately slipped by, we had a hot & dry July followed by a more mixed August & September.

This season seems to ticking along very nicely, we had one of our biggest dumps of snow a couple of days ago and it brought back memories of last season with waist deep powder every week. Although we havn’t been having mega dumps all the time we have been getting constant smaller snowfalls all through December & January, the skiing this January has been superb with the pistes in tip-top condition and plenty of blue skies mixed in too.
Roll on February and bring on the kids !

The first proper load of snow just managed to catch the end of November, because yesterday we got about 30cms in the village. Had to give the snow shovels a dust off and quickly get the snow tyres on the car.
The lifts will be opening for the first time this weekend, with a special promo of ladies ski free when accompanied by a man !

The big news this week is that the private road up to our chalet has finally been resurfaced. We now have a lovely smooth tarmac road all the way to the chalet. It’s taken a couple of years of rather slow discussions between all the residents on the road and the contractors to finally all agree on costs and splitting of costs.
So hopefully with a new surface and better drainage it might be a little less icy during the winter.
The weather has continued to stay cold and we’ve had several little snow falls in the village, surely a good sign of another cracking winter to come !
I’m sure Woody, the new American owner of the Abondance ski area will be hoping so. He recently bought the ski station which has been closed for the last 2 years and is reportedly planning to use it for testing his state of the art snow cannons which work at warmer temperatures then any other machine currently available.

This winter Snowjet have introduced a new flight to Sion airport in Switzerland.
The service from London Stansted on Saturdays & Sundays throughout the winter could be great time saver, as we all know the Swiss like to be efficient and the small airport at Sion should ensure quick baggage reclaim & check-in. Transfer times to Chatel should be about 1 hour.

This weekend saw the first snowfall of the winter in Chatel village, only a few centimetres which didn’t stay for very long. It’s still covering all the slopes above the village but not quite time to get the skis out yet.
But definately a reminder that there’s not long to go to finish off any jobs on the garden & outside the chalet. Time to pack the garden furniture away.
The village now has a soundtrack of cow bells ringing, as all the cows have been moved down to the fields around the village before heading indoors for the winter.

Last weekend saw the first cold spell hit the Alps since last winter, we had a dusting of snow on the tops of the mountains although it was very wet and miserable down in the village. I had to scrap the ice off the car this morning and we lit the first fire in the chalet for a quite a few months.
After the constantly hot summer we had it was a bit of a shock to feel the cold again.

So about this time last year I spent quite a bit of time researching what weather was being forecast for the coming winter.
The general consensus seemed to be an OK winter, although not a single source said anything about being consistently very cold with regular big snow falls, so it was a very pleasant surprise when last winter turned out to be one of the best winters in the Alps for over 10 to 20 years, depending on who you spoke to.

Then in spring this year the MetOffice came out and predicted a Barbecue summer in the UK, not sure if this was just an attempt to cheer people up and ease the financial crisis but it spectacularly failed to materialise, although it was the hottest and sunniest Wimbledon for years.

The MetOffice have just said the early indications are for another average winter.

But I’m thinking all these predictions seem to be fairly rubbish !

I can tell you that we had a superb hot summer in the Alps, so maybe the MetOffice just got there map upside down or something when they did the prediction in spring. Plus we’ve had a record number of spiders in the chalet this summer and as we all know this has got to be a good sign for the snowy winter to come.

Fingers crossed.

It’s been a very busy summer up the mountain, with a new chair lift and extra snow cannons being installed.

Chatel is currently in the middle of a 4 year program to install snow cannons on all the pistes in the Pre La Joux area, this summer has seen the creation of a new reservoir to supply the extra water to the cannons that have been added to the Les Combes and Linga 2 pistes. These new cannons bring the total number in the resort to 173.

The new super fast 6-person chair lift will be called Echo Alpin and is a replacement for the 3-person old Linga 2 lift, the new lift will start further down the mountain and only take 5 minutes to get to the top.

Anyone who has skied the huge off piste bowl of La Leiche will be loving the new lift, because instead of having to get the Leiche drag lift and then Linga 2 chair to get back to the top which used to take over 15 mins in total, Echo Alpin will now do it in a third of the time.

The diggers have also been very busy up at Super Chatel earlier this summer, they’ve reshaped the red piste which comes down towards the village and upgraded the snow cannons that where there.