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.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s been talked about for almost 20 years but work is finally under way to link up the Super-Chatel and Linga pistes. There will be two new chairlifts located at the top of the village just passed Lac Vonnes, one heading up to Super-Chatel and the other heading over to link up with the Linga pistes.

Super-Chatel to Lac Vonnes

As you can see from this image there will be a new 1500 meter blue piste coming from Super-Chatel down to Lac Vonnes which will be fitting with snow cannons.
The chairlift will be the 4-person high speed detachable type, and some of you may even have ridden this exact same chair before because it is coming from the Proclou in Avoriaz which is being upgraded to a 6-person lift this summer.

Lac Vonnes to Linga

Read the rest of this entry »

This year we have 3 new ski lifts currently being installed throughout the Portes du Soleil, for the coming 2012/2013 ski season.

Morzine is replacing the old and slow Troncs chairlift with a new high-speed six seater chair. This lift starts at a collection of restaurants and runs up to the Nyon area which has a snowpark and several great runs, including the fantastic red from the top of Pointe de Nyon. I regularly stop for lunch at the nearest restaurant to the bottom of this chair, so I’m looking forward to speeding off up hill straight after lunch next season.

The Morgins lift company is installing a new high speed lift to replace Les Bochasses, which was a very old T-bar drag lift. This lift is in the area between Morgins and Champoussin, it too has several great pistes that always used to be very under used and quiet because of the cranky old lift. But with a new lift in this area I reckon there will definitely be more skiers on the pistes next season.

Avoriaz is busy replacing the big old cable car that runs from the bottom of Prodains up to the resort, the old cable car only had a capacity of 400 people an hour. But the new 3S cable car system will have a capacity between 2000 and 2400 people an hour.
The 3S system is the latest ski lift technology, which combines the benefits of large cable car with the constantly moving chair lift system. Avoriaz will have 12 cars with 35 seats in each, the cars rest on 2 cables with provides a more stable ride.

The lift station at the top is also being completely rebuilt to provide improved entry and exit. Although we are going to have to wait until mid-February 2013 to try out this new lift, but I’m sure it will be worth the wait. Whenever I went to use the old lift it invariably departed just as I got there and so the whole trip would take well over half an hour.