Another big night in town last night as everyone went slightly bonkers welcoming in the new decade. As per usual Place Central was carnage, but four the first time in five years we didn’t head there, and watched the whole thing unfold from Jo and Gareth’s balcony. A great vantage point to see the thousands and thousands of fireworks going off across town.

Our favourite was definitely coming from somewhere above the Sport Centre. At the time we thought it looked like the display at the Millennium Wheel, but we could be wrong. Suffice to say we all went “Oooooh” and “Ahhhhh” a lot.

Anyway, Happy New Year from everyone here and you’ll be delighted to hear we’ve got snow coming Sunday night…

Having managed to wangle off not only Christmas Day but also Boxing Day, I managed to get some impressive lie-ins and also get up the hill a bit. Admittedly we pretty much only got as far as Chez Dany on Christmas Day, but on Boxing Day we actually did some skiing.

So here are the rather dramatic views from Combatzeline…

Just got back and despite the cloud robing us of visibility in the afternoon, we had about a three hour window when everything was amazing. And it looked like this (well better actually as the clouds completely disappeared) – a bit of an early Christmas present really…

Had another great day on the hill with the boys, although the plummeting temperatures meant nobody stood around too long taking in the views. It was absolutely baltic – minus 14 at mid-station and even colder up at Col des Gentianes. And it all looked a bit like this…

A very chilly day on the hill but great conditions and the cannons have been on non-stop which means Christmas will be comfortably skiing to resort and the lifties have told me that everything below Ruinettes should be  rolling by the weekend.

Meanwhile we went up and had a look at Mont Fort which has been heavily bombed by the patrollers – who obviously thought the whole thing was unstable so set off the biggest slide I’ve ever seen up there. The crown wall at the top must be several feet high.

Apart from that, we nipped into Cabane Mont Fort which was great as usual, although so cold the water was freezing in the glasses after about ten minutes. Rather nippy up there…

The two massive fractures up at Mont Fort (one beneath the lift station and where the piste normally is on skier’s left of the lift – you might need to squint a little):

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Lunch at Cabane Mont Fort was slightly reminiscent of feeding time at the zoo, but the Bec des Rosses (behind) looked great…

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After getting told on the news that the visability was “poor” in Swiss ski resorts last night I had to shout at the telly quite a lot – we were above the (light wispy) cloud all day yesterday as it was hanging about well below 1800m. So Ruinettes was in amazing sunshine virtually all day and you could see for miles. The conditions were great on piste too- as long as you kept warm enough as it’s pretty chilly up there.

And it’s about to get properly cold as forecasts say we could get down to minus 20°C at night this week…

Meanwhile, here’s a couple of shots of the trees below Ruinettes. The blue stuff appearing as we approached Ruinettes didn’t exist according to Sky News…

PS. Click here and you can see for yourself what the weather’s doing in town on the webcams (the bottom two are on the blink).