Yes, this winter has started with a bang and on only the second weekend of the year Verbier can boast lifts open down to mid-station and enough snow for people to be skiing into resort and even putting tracks down the Attelas Couloirs and Creblet.

Now, we certainly wouldn’t recommend that as we know how upsetting a big hole in the bottom of your ski is when you inevitably run out of snow and hit a few rocks. But that said, we’ve all done it…

The snow up top was really good – Sophie said it was “chalky”. Which is good enough for me – especially when you bear in mind some years we haven’t even got Lac des Vaux open. And the next step in the annual guessing game is when will they start opening the lifts all week and not just at weekends?

As well as the Lac des Vaux lift running the Tortin bubble also fired up so that people over in Nendaz and Siviez could enjoy the cracking early season snow. We also have new restaurant news – well quite a lot of that another time actually – but first up is that the Olympique self-service restaurant has had a proper make-over and is actually quite nice. Have a look at the gallery and there’s a snap in the gallery somewhere.

In fact, everything seems to be ticking along nicely…

Yes, despite a little scepticism on Facebook last week the lifts opened today. As usual it’s officially Lac des Vaux but the snow is great and everyone is skiing back down from Attelas to Ruinettes.

Our man with camera is Mr Lewis and he decided – along with a few disturbed friends – that despite them opening the lifts they should ski tour up to Lac des Vaux rather than take the Funispace. Well ours is not to reason why and thanks to Martin we can show you what the day is looking like up there…

The great news is that TeleVerbier has announced the opening dates for the lifts and the plan is to open the Lac des Vaux runs and possibly Attelas to Ruinettes at the weekends from the 9th of November. Which is a week on Saturday. I know, good isn’t it?

Open until May. Even better, eh?

In addition the claim is that from the 30th November it’ll be open during the week as well. Significantly they are hoping to open until May 4th this season – a week later than usual.

 

Mont Fort, Savoleyres and Bruson

Mont Fort is theoretically opening from the 30th November too, with Savoleyres scheduled for the 14th December and the shiny new Bruson lift will open up Bruson from 21st December through to the 21st April – stop me if I’m wrong that’s a week or two later than normal isn’t it? Finally the beginners lift in town is scheduled to open on the 14th.

 

Assuming the weather plays ball.

Now don’t forget that the big factor here is the weather – and Verbier normally opens up the first week of November a the weekends. So the real race is to see if it opens that first weekend, and then how long before week long opening and the pistes from Attelas to Ruinettes opening. If the weather’s good it’ll be sooner rather than later.

Now for some shameless plugging.

As always, there is only one place to keep your eyes on this. Here.

So keep an eye on the blog and don’t forget we’re on Twitter, Facebook and even Instagram – so you can keep up to date there. We’ll be posting photos of anything to do with Verbier constantly, so you’ll be missing out if you don’t…

 

 

Yes, after the photos from the other day it kept snowing and today we made it up to Ruinettes and La Chaux to have a look. And it is very snowy. Very very snowy.

Now, who knows if it will all melt or if it will keep coming, but the main thing is it’s started and long may it continue.

After all we haven’t had an epic winter in Verbier for, oh, months…

 

Yes. It’s happened.

Yesterday afternoon and last night the wet miserable weather got just a fraction colder and it started snowing. “Like crazy”, according to Kling – who know’s a thing or two about these things.

So as the clouds have slowly parted this morning we’ve snapped some of the views and it is, as we often tell you, epic up there.

Now, we know that it might all melt and leave sad little faces all over Verbier. But the point isn’t that it will stay. The point is it’s started.

And that, people, is most epic news indeed.

 

After the sheer joy of seeing the pylons flown into place by a massive helicopter, the rest of the development of the Bruson lift was bound to be moderately anticlimactic.

But we can now confirm the roof is on, the cable has been installed and we will soon need to ask somebody who knows about these things exactly what remains to be done. Because in my book if you’ve got a load of pylons with a cable hanging off it, you just attache a few lifts and we’re off. This could also be why I’m not involved in the build.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the Bruson lift – or familiar with Bruson – the lift is going to join the Verbier lift network via Le Chable – the village in the valley – giving us high speed access from Verbier across to the small satellite resort of Bruson.

Bruson has been the locals’ favourite secret for years, but due to the slow access (it used to take a lift a bus and then a very, very slow chair to get across) it’s always been very quiet, even in high season. So whilst the new link will mean Bruson doesn’t stay a secret any more, it does mean we’ll have a very quick access to some fantastic terrain – something which will be good news for skiers and ski instructors alike. You can see what we’re talking about here, when Guy, Rich and Sophie went for a bit of adventure skiing over there in 2012.

So keep an eye out and I’m pretty sure that as soon as they open the lift, we’ll be up there to check it out…

PS Thanks very much to Laura for the pics.