Thanks to Martin for making this montage of our training week. Pretty special.

 

This is not a blog post that needs much in the top half. So suffice to say it’s snowed loads, it’s snowing again today. Loads. And tomorrow. Loads. And last weekend you could ski Col de Mouche because the Chassoure bubble was open. OK the actual Chassoure-Tortin itinerary isn’t officially open yet, but does Verbier get better than a powder day with nobody around and Col de Mouche to yourself?

Probably, but right now I can’t think of anything.

 

 

As always, if youtube clips don’t play straight away then just click here go to our channel…

…well not in Verbier. And we are not likely to get that much. But this is a shot of the Yuki-no-Otani Snow Canyon in Toyama, Japan or  affectionally known as the Tateyama Alpine Route in Japan. Lets hope the Route de Verbier never gets to this state..!

OK, confession. Martin did go to Zermatt. And he did go with Anders. And he did go snowboarding (the Performance Disciplinary Panel is convening as I type). But he wasn’t with Tom Jones – he just saw someone who looked like Tom. And it meant we could have this hysterical headline.

But come on – winter is here. Really here. And we’re all getting very excited indeed. We’ve got Lac des Vaux open, we’ve got instructors off training (and messing about) on glaciers and generally the season is rumbling into action.

So enjoy the photos, check out the rest of the blog for all sorts of pre-season videos and pictures while you’re here. This one is excellent. And enjoy – it’s going to be a smashing winter. I can feel it.

This needs no explaining – someone simply plonked a little piece of genius on Vimeo and this is the result. If you weren’t ready for sinter before you watched it, you will be in a couple of cheese-filled minutes… And for more of this click here.

Meanwhile we have snow in Verbier today (although if you click on that link you might get more or less snow, depending on what day it is when you read this. But check anyway).

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.