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…

It was very chilly this morning in Le Chable. very chilly indeed. And it occured to us that the winter is not only closing in on us, it’s actually only a few weeks away – in fact if we open Verbier on the first weekend of November like we normally do, then it’s only six weeks away…

Well, with that date firmly in our sites we thought quite a lot about skiing. And started nosing around the internet for pretty much anything skiingish. And we found this gem.

So if you fancy a bit of technical analysis from the top man at the Canadian Ski Alliance, then this is going to be right up your Straße. It’s not the most complete analysis of skiing and he certainly likes to be very nice and polite about the different systems, but fun to watch.

Yes, Guy’s following up on his dreams of becoming some kind of celebrity weather guru by talking to the nice people at the Sunday Times.

Of course had they asked about what was to come this week, they’d have been very happy to hear it’s going to snow on Thursday and Friday. How much? Well, somewhere between a bit and a lot, depending on who you ask. It keeps changing you see.

If you were to ask us, maybe 20cm at mid station. (That’s a total guess so click here for a more accurate figure).

The snow’s coming down in town and the forecast is for it to keep going all day. Which nearly makes up for the act we were due a load more on Friday but there’s high pressure moving north over the Med which has scuppered things. (Now, that’s a pretty geeky answer but we know you only deal in the cold hard facts).

Still, it’s pretty relentless snow this morning so cross something for us…

Meanwhile it’s been baltic in resort the last few days, but it’s also been blue skies and looking stunning. This stunning in fact:

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Snow update…

Here are a couple of snaps in town this morning but we’ve also just been told they’ve got over a foot of fresh down by Lake Geneva (cheers Rob – and everyone else have a read of his splendid blog).

It’s been chucking it down all day, but it didn’t settle in town until about 6. However, after it started to settle it’s been dumping…

Yup, as predicted by a few people in resort, the cannons are kicking out snow up at Lac des Vaux.

Now, they’re not ‘working’ they’re merely being ‘tested’. That’s because they aren’t allowed to start the cannons to make snow for skiing until the end of the month, but testing’s fine. It’s a very blurred line isn’t it?

Whatever the rules, they’ve got them on and Mike says it’s not impossible that the resort will open a week earlier than scheduled, although they have a lot of work to do to get the lift refitting done in time… So a big task if TeleVerbier really want to do it…