So, whilst we haven’t yet had winter sink it’s icy claws in to Verbier (see how prosaic I can be early in the morning?), the good news is it’s allowed plenty of progress on the new lift, as well as helped the guys who are fitting all the usual ones.

And, as ever, Mike has been working on things and sent us a few photos. Which is always good, isn’t it?

So, first up are the new drag lifts he’s been fitting. Mike claims that it’s like building IKEA furniture as they actually come flat-packed and he has to build them in the  workshop. Now, we love everything about that Swedish blue and yellow temple of stuff, it’s not a parallel that’s filling us with confidence… But he says he read the instructions before he started, and it’ll all be fine.

Next up is the main course – the new lift. Now, Olly has already struck with a cracking suggestion for the name. If you imagine that there’s already the “James Blunt Chair” (aka the Attelas Chair Lift) which got it’s nick name after it was opened by the singer, he has suggested “The post-Carrefour Digestion Express” as, let’s face it, we’ll be using it extensively after a nice lunch in the sunshine on the Carrefour terrace.

But the seats have arrived and rumbled through town the other day on the back of a whopping lorry, and they’re already fitting them and frankly it’s looking good to go – especially the development of the new housing at the start of the lift which was looking worryingly like a big hole in the ground last time we checked and rather unlike a lift. How things have changed…

And finally we have the preparations at Les Essertes. Many of you will have forgotten all about our little magic carpet on the beginners slope in town, but for our instructors it’s always nice to see it getting prepared – we’ll spend a lot of time there this winter, so let’s hope Mike’s read the instructions on this too…

The IKEA drag lifts:

The new chair lift:

Ahhh, Les Essertes:

I know, we normally run lots of stories with impressive pictures of snow and skiing around this time of year but don’t panic – it’s still very, very early and even in a good year the only area open is Lac des Vaux. Which stops being fun rather quickly. The real stuff only starts rolling in December.

Anyway, the good news is that there has been snow up there, too high for lac des Vaux but the view at sunset from the Mont Fort webcam was particularly epic. And here are a couple of snaps to whet your whistle and prove that it’s always snowing somewhere…

 

Yes, after warmer weather that saw all the snow we had two weeks ago disappear, and after a soggy few days it’s finally snowing up at Lac des Vaux again.

But the biggest reason that we know winter is coming is that the Pub Mont Fort opened up last night, which always feels like the starting point of the season.

I think the thing about early season is that we’ve been rather spoilt for the past three seasons, and we almost expect to be up skiing the first weekend of every season as if that’s normal. We forget that in seasons before these last three, we might not have had anything open until December. It’s unusual to have the whole place already up and running in November.

Speaking of unusual, the final bit of news concerns Mike – he just sent me a picture of one of the piste machines and is convinced it looks like that annoying Hello Kitty thing that all the kids go mad for. Thoughts? We think he might simply have spent too long up the hill fixing lifts on his own – it gives the mind time to wander you see…

Click here for the latest images from the webcams…

Yes, it looks like we haven’t got any skiing in store this weekend as there’s not enough snow at the top, but we are forecast some this weekend and there are all sorts of swirling menacing things somewhere over the Atlantic and they should be heading our way soonish. Hopefully a lot and soon.

But what we do have is a list of the lift opening times for this season, which is rather handy. And it takes our minds off the fact we’re not going to be skiing this weekend…

Yes, it’s gone a bit quiet on the precipitation front in Verbier. We had that snow the week before last, and then we went to the Ski Show in London, and when we got back, well, there wasn’t any snow in town.

Now, that’s normal, after all we’ve got a bit used to the amazing early snow of the last few years and have perhaps forgotten that we’ve had winters in the last five years where people have been happily playing golf at the start of December. So it’s the end of October and we’ve had two nice big, early falls. But now it’s quiet.

If this was a Western we’d all be saying it’s too quiet and we should get the wagons in a circle. Or something like that.

Anyway, to take your mind off the snow, and to give you a little dose of stupidity, we thought you might like to see the latest GoPro video…

Yes, as predicted the sun is back out and revealing the extent of the snow.

Now RHS will get all cynical and tell you it’ll never last. He’s probably right. But whether or not it stays in Verbier doesn’t matter. What matters is that there’s a decent amount at lac des Vaux… Ready for November 5th…