Month: January 2007

I have been a bit slow at updating this blog recently, but I know that everyone is desperate to find out what the snow conditions are like. The answer? Not bad at all. We haven’t got massive depths, but the Linga, Pre La Joux, Avoriaz and Les Crossets domains are superb. Some of the other areas in the Portes du Soleil are a bit ropey but that seems to be down to poor piste management rather than lack of snow.

The UK media has done us a massive favour this year. Their doom & gloom reports has meant that guests have turned up not really expecting to do any skiing, when in fact there are plenty of runs open.

I even read in the Telegraph last week that Chatel was shut, or suffering badly or something along those lines, whereas the reality was that the North facing areas of the Chatel domain were open with great skiing over to Avoriaz. I think that on slow news days, reporters are quite happy to get un substantiated information from organisations such as the ski club and print it without checking the facts out first.

Christmas and New Year have both come and gone, and during this time snow has been quite thin on the ground. Although the snow conditions haven’t been great, we have been lucky in that the Portes du Soleil (specifically Avoriaz) has apparantly had the best snow in the whole of the European Alps. This wasn’t as exciting as it sounds with low depths at the top of the slopes and artificial snow at the bottom but despite the conditions most of our guests have reported excellent skiing over the festive period.

Thankfully the conditions have all changed for the better with heavy snow falling over the last 24 hours. With snow also forecast for tonight, and then again on Thursday we should hopefully be back to where we would normally expect to be at this time of year.

So is this simply a blip in the normal weather patterns – winter coming slightly later this year, or is it a sign of the dreaded global warming? Well given that this situation has happened before approximately every 15 years, and that in the past there has been even less snow, I tend to believe it is less to do with climate change, and more an illustration of the fact that we are dealing with the most unpredictable force in the world – mother nature. Just because the snow comes in November 10 years in a row is no guarantee that it will arrive in November during the 11th year!

And what of the claims that the European ski industry is dead, and that everyone should head to North America? The pundits who wrote those particular claims obviously have quite short memories becuase it was only 2 seasons ago that Whistler in Canada didn’t receive any significant snow until mid Feb!

Anyway, all speculation aside, the snow is here so lets enjoy it! We still have some January availability and we are offering discounts on everything that’s left. Also, we still have some spaces on our Off Piste Adventure Course on the 27th Jan – luxury accommodation and serious skiing!

Enjoy the snow…