Mike called me yesterday – for those of you who don’t know, Mike works for Televerbier in the summer fixing the lifts. Anyway, he told me that he and the Televerbier team who’ve been making up the lift parts in Sembrancher were meeting the helicopter pilot at Ruinettes at 7.30 this morning to organise flying in the new pylons.

Well, I’ve told a few people and they all say “they haven’t even put the pylons up yet?”. But actually (Mike says) tha the real work is building the top and bottom installations, and the pylons simply get built elsewhere, flown in and bolted down. Easy…

So today we should hear a whopping helicopter hovering up by Au Mayen and see the new lift really take shape. Should be up and running some time in early December…

It’s that time of year. The time of year when people start the first rumours and generally turn their thoughts towards winter.

Now, there are a few of us – the slightly more cantankerous sort – who deliberately start rumours. Then there are the old wizened ski bums and guides who quote all sorts of natural phenomenon to indicate the coming winter.

Then still there are the (actually, more sensible) scientific minded ones who point out that the weather system is a chaotic system, a system not accurately predictable more than three or four days in advance. They sometimes talk about the butterfly effect, but by then I’ve usually zoned out.

Finally there are people who talk about sun spots. The less said the better.

But this season it seems the volume of berries on the trees and the size and quantity of spiders in your sink are to be the key indexes of the snow levels next winter.

Yes, I was surprised too.

You see, Verbier is inundated with spiders this autumn (the giant house spider I think you’ll find – Tegenaria duellica) and I might be guilty of exacerbating the situation with hysterical mutterings on facebook and twitter. But the fact remains there are some hefty arachnids floating about.

And the combination of eight-legged monsters and berries on the trees means everyone’s predicting a bumper season for snow. I don’t know about the science of the prediction, but it’s a prediction I like and I’d like to give it momentum by showing you the kind of beasties we’re dealing with…

Best photo?

It’s one of those competitions I already know who will win, but at the moment I think I know who’s got the best photo in terms of artistic merit, and also who’s got the best one in terms of making their spider look like something out of a special effects cupboard. But please let us know your thoughts by commenting. I might be wrong.

And if you want to know why I’m typing this at 6.30 am, it’s because at about 5.30 I woke up convinced there was a spider crawling over me and now can’t get back to sleep. Oh, the irony – still, if you live by the spider…

Yes, insomnia is a funny thing. I get it in bouts – sometimes I just wake up and that’s it. No chance of getting back to sleep.

So after waking up around five, by half past seven I thought I should go for a wander. And I was very glad I did because not only is Verbier at dawn rather nice, I also had a nose around the new lift. Which is looking a lot better than I expected.

Oh, and they look like they’re widening the run into resort. And making pretty banks out of massive rocks. Which is actually good news indeed.

Yes, as anticipated it’s boiling here today. So nipped down to see Kent and check out the new Berglund pad in Le Chable.

And on the way down grabbed a few snaps of the Trois Roc at Medran. From one angle it looks like an impressive development nearing completion. From another angle it still looks like a big hole in the ground…

Verbier. Looks a bit like toy town, but very cool. (Oh, and click full screen to get the full effect…).

One day in Verbier from Sacha Fehlmann on Vimeo.

Time laps movie of the Alps made in Verbier, Switzerland.

Did you take a cheeky shortcut through the off-piste at Lac des Vaux last winter and lose a ski? Well, Mike’s just found a very lonely 174 Stokli GS ski up there…