New Ski lift in Veysonnaz – Piste de L’Ours new 8 man gondola

We are all very excited to hear that TeleVerbier are to upgrade the old 4 man chair in La Chaux to a shiny new fast 6 man, as reported recently on Verbier.com. This will indeed make a difference to those who have outgrown Les Esserts and want a fat lunch in Le Dahu.

But the real game changer is happening over in the 3rd Valley, Veysonnaz. A couple of years go TeleThyon upgraded the old gondola from Veysonnaz town to Thyon. Not only did it reduce the time by about 7 minutes, the wonders of automatic doors meant that you no longer needed a lift assistant to lock you into the tin can and another to release you at the top..!

This year it the turn of the Piste de L’Ours. Described by a French downhill skier as ‘the most beautiful piste in the world’ the Bear piste is a steep, long and undulating piste lined by trees. It is the scene of many FIS World Cup downhill competitions over the years. Although the lift used to be the fastest in Europe in 1981, it certainly isn’t now with a bottom to top time in excess of 15 minutes. The new Piste de L’Ours gondola will halve the time which means you will have time to do at least 2 thigh burning runs of the FIS downhill before a well earned lunch at the Le Bois Sauvage in Les Masses.

 

Today was a very good day. It was cold, it was sunny and it was epic. A word we will return to more than once this season I think…

So we won’t bore you with details, but suffice to say it started with temperatures of about minus 8 in town and although high cloud came over later, it was a cracking day to be up the mountain.

So, the sun is out, it’s been out for quite a bit and looks set to stay out until Christmas. Well, Christmas-ish.

Yes, for the budding weathermen and women amongst you, you will be aware that there’s a whopping area of high pressure that’s settled in across Europe and doesn’t want to go anywhere, so Verbier is consistently getting sunny days, cold temperatures and that groundhog day feeling. Still, the fantastic sunshine does give you chance to admire our fantastic new uniforms and debate if it’s orange, tangerine, saffron or egg yolk. I’m firmly behind saffron, if you’re asking.

What does this look like? Well, epic actually. And whilst these snaps show you that it’s all dead pretty I can also confirm the pistes are skiing really well and are in great condition after the heavy snow of a couple of weeks ago. Naturally more would be nice, but we’ll have to cross our fingers and be good.

 

 

Want more? Well how about Martin ski touring up Mont Fort?

Yes our intrepid Martin decided to put DJ and David in the hurt locker and hike up to Mont Fort. They nearly made it but after realising that it’s miles they made a tactical withdrawal after getting most of the way there. Very sensible in my humble opinion. What did it look like? Well like this…

The great news is that TeleVerbier has announced the opening dates for the lifts and the plan is to open the Lac des Vaux runs and possibly Attelas to Ruinettes at the weekends from the 9th of November. Which is a week on Saturday. I know, good isn’t it?

Open until May. Even better, eh?

In addition the claim is that from the 30th November it’ll be open during the week as well. Significantly they are hoping to open until May 4th this season – a week later than usual.

 

Mont Fort, Savoleyres and Bruson

Mont Fort is theoretically opening from the 30th November too, with Savoleyres scheduled for the 14th December and the shiny new Bruson lift will open up Bruson from 21st December through to the 21st April – stop me if I’m wrong that’s a week or two later than normal isn’t it? Finally the beginners lift in town is scheduled to open on the 14th.

 

Assuming the weather plays ball.

Now don’t forget that the big factor here is the weather – and Verbier normally opens up the first week of November a the weekends. So the real race is to see if it opens that first weekend, and then how long before week long opening and the pistes from Attelas to Ruinettes opening. If the weather’s good it’ll be sooner rather than later.

Now for some shameless plugging.

As always, there is only one place to keep your eyes on this. Here.

So keep an eye on the blog and don’t forget we’re on Twitter, Facebook and even Instagram – so you can keep up to date there. We’ll be posting photos of anything to do with Verbier constantly, so you’ll be missing out if you don’t…

 

 

Yes. It’s happened.

Yesterday afternoon and last night the wet miserable weather got just a fraction colder and it started snowing. “Like crazy”, according to Kling – who know’s a thing or two about these things.

So as the clouds have slowly parted this morning we’ve snapped some of the views and it is, as we often tell you, epic up there.

Now, we know that it might all melt and leave sad little faces all over Verbier. But the point isn’t that it will stay. The point is it’s started.

And that, people, is most epic news indeed.