As we predicted snow arrived yesterday and has made it down to Le Chable and while Toby took Laika (the neurotic dog) out for a stroll this morning he snapped these. What do you think? 10 centimetres? Martin says there’s about 20 in Verbier itself – naturally we’ll bring you more later on…

The weather forecast for Verbier is for snow all day folowed by clear skies tomorrow and the temperature to creep above freezing on Tuesday, but the real question is will they get the snow cannons firing at Lac des Vaux?

Meanwhile keep an eye on Facebook and Twitter as we’ll add more pictures over the next day or two…

So the snow is falling and it should be snowing right down to Le Chable by tomorrow morning.

Which means we can all restart the debate about whether or not it’s a good omen, if it’ll be a good winter, if we will be open by November, and of course should we expect anything of the sort?

We put something on Facebook the other day about the snow coming and whilst loads of people got excited, a few were pretty pragmatic. And you have to be.

Because what we get this time of year doesn’t dictate what kind of a winter we’ll get.

This time last year we had nothing – NOTHING – up there until that first weekend in December. And we all know what happened after that – we had an epic season.

That said, if you can’t start rumours, make exorbitant claims about the amount of snow we’ll get, and turn it into an obsessive conversation in the Pub Mont Fort (which opens on the 2nd November as it happens – Colin, mine’s a Guinness) then it’s no fun whatsoever.

So we’ll continue to drop phrases like “The One Hundred Year Storm” into conversation and generally tantalise everyone with rumours of patterns in the Atlantic deepwater “conveyor belt” system thingy bringing in storms.

As Oli pointed out, it’ always snows at this time of year. Bless him. So enjoy and keep checking the webcams – they’ve changed a bit and should work on iPhones and iPads now, although at he same time a few have stopped working completely, which is annoying…

 

 

This month Téléverbier published an update on the lift projects for the coming years. We all know that the Bruson lift project has started and will be ready for December 2013. There will also be more snow cannons on Le Rouge and Savoleyres areas. Although there is no real date for the replacement of the ageing Savoleyres lift they say the following

COMBIMIX LES ESSERTS – LES PLANARDS – SAVOLEYRES

The proposed new facility for serving Savoleyres was submitted to the Federal Office of Transport for approval.

Given the complexity of the case, it is difficult to estimate the duration of the procedure. We hope that this groundbreaking lift, comprising a first section served by cabs and a second mixing section cabins and seats can be built in 2014.

We look forward already to be able to unite our main skiing areas.

Lets hope this is true..!

Toby

Think happy thoughts everyone, snow is one the radar…

Now, it’s not a lot but after a spell of clear skies and sunshine following the snow in Verbier the other week, this is a refreshing change. And before you get too excited or too cynical, just remember some of our best seasons have been late starters – like last year, and God knows we got snow in the end…

We’ve also had loads of snow pre-season then nothing after Christmas. The weather is a very fickle beast. So our scientific recommendation is to cross your fingers and think happy thoughts. And start having extended conversations about the number of spiders, the berries on the trees and try to drop “100 year storm” into your Facebook status with authority. It worked for us last year…

 

…and it looked like this last year…

 

As you all probably know. Caroline and I finally got married in September. It was a cracking day..!! With a fairly hefty hangover on the Sunday. We bordered a flight to South Africa. We ended up in Namibia.

During out Sossusvlei we climbed a couple of dunes. My wife had a go at skiing down one of them:

The clouds have disappeared and to coincide with some smashing views of the top of resort, there are new format webcams – click here.

Epic.