Yes, this winter has started with a bang and on only the second weekend of the year Verbier can boast lifts open down to mid-station and enough snow for people to be skiing into resort and even putting tracks down the Attelas Couloirs and Creblet.

Now, we certainly wouldn’t recommend that as we know how upsetting a big hole in the bottom of your ski is when you inevitably run out of snow and hit a few rocks. But that said, we’ve all done it…

The snow up top was really good – Sophie said it was “chalky”. Which is good enough for me – especially when you bear in mind some years we haven’t even got Lac des Vaux open. And the next step in the annual guessing game is when will they start opening the lifts all week and not just at weekends?

As well as the Lac des Vaux lift running the Tortin bubble also fired up so that people over in Nendaz and Siviez could enjoy the cracking early season snow. We also have new restaurant news – well quite a lot of that another time actually – but first up is that the Olympique self-service restaurant has had a proper make-over and is actually quite nice. Have a look at the gallery and there’s a snap in the gallery somewhere.

In fact, everything seems to be ticking along nicely…

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.

 

So the snow is falling and it should be snowing right down to Le Chable by tomorrow morning.

Which means we can all restart the debate about whether or not it’s a good omen, if it’ll be a good winter, if we will be open by November, and of course should we expect anything of the sort?

We put something on Facebook the other day about the snow coming and whilst loads of people got excited, a few were pretty pragmatic. And you have to be.

Because what we get this time of year doesn’t dictate what kind of a winter we’ll get.

This time last year we had nothing – NOTHING – up there until that first weekend in December. And we all know what happened after that – we had an epic season.

That said, if you can’t start rumours, make exorbitant claims about the amount of snow we’ll get, and turn it into an obsessive conversation in the Pub Mont Fort (which opens on the 2nd November as it happens – Colin, mine’s a Guinness) then it’s no fun whatsoever.

So we’ll continue to drop phrases like “The One Hundred Year Storm” into conversation and generally tantalise everyone with rumours of patterns in the Atlantic deepwater “conveyor belt” system thingy bringing in storms.

As Oli pointed out, it’ always snows at this time of year. Bless him. So enjoy and keep checking the webcams – they’ve changed a bit and should work on iPhones and iPads now, although at he same time a few have stopped working completely, which is annoying…

 

 

As predicted it snowed at about midstation last night, so the Savoleyres ridge and from just above Ruinette we’ve got a blanket of snow. Now, we all know it’ll mostly be gone by lunchtime but it’s a great time of the year when the first snow falls comes, and they gradually get lower and lower until it snows right down to resort.

But the temperature is set to dip over the next few days and it’ll be below freezing in Verbier when we all get up tomorrow for the first time since last winter. And who knows? Maybe just a little of that snow will stay if it’s tucked behind ridges and hidden from the sun…

Meanwhile, here’s what the webcams revealed this morning.

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.

Yes, the double whammy of a snow storm hitting and the new Performance outfits arriving back from the printers can only be an omen. Winter is here and it means business.

So here are the first glimpses of the new outfits, leaving behind the old green and yellow Kermit style and bringing in a whole new era of brightness that means when we sit on lifts together it looks like a packet of refreshers going up a mountain. Rather disconcerting.

But we hope you like it. We’re rather pleased with the combination…

And the even better news is that the sun popped it’s head out once or twice today but the cloud has kept all that nice fresh snow exactly where it is (on the trees and on the pistes) and it’s snowed on and off all day.

And – even better than that (if you feel you can cope) is that all the forecasts have upped their predicted snow fall for the coming days. Could be epic.