This creaky old lift that runs from the bottom of the Mossettes lift up towards Avoriaz was a prime candidate renovation due to it’s age and being surrounded by newer lifts with better pistes.
But as we’ve seen with other makeovers in recent years the combination of a new fast lift and some remodelling of the connecting pistes can give a whole new lease of life to an area.

The chair itself is upgrading from an ancient 3-man to a high speed 6-man, with the top station being moved over 250 metres east along the ridge to allow for a new piste.
There was previously an off-piste itinerary route that came down underneath the lift, but this was fairly tricky and technical route especially without fresh snow when it became a chopped up mogul field. But the diggers and bulldozers have been busy this summer in crafting a whole new blue piste under the lift which has just been named “Blue Velvet” in a competition run by Avoriaz tourist office.

It will be interesting to see what effect the upgrade has on the area, it was definitely underused before but I’d expect it to pull in punters now it’s all shiny and new. Plus a new groomed piste to enjoy.

Total Kilometres of Ski Pistes

The Portes du Soleil clearly comes out on top with the 650 kms of pistes throughout the whole domain.

There has been some controversy recently over how the resorts come up with these figures, with German ski author and cartographer Christoph Schrahe claiming pretty much every area exaggerates their numbers.

It is funny how every resort seems to add up to a pretty round number !

The Portes du Soleil should get busy revising their figures to include the brand new piste built for the new Super-Chatel to Linga link.

6 Day Ski Pass Price

A large chunk of the cost a ski holiday is the cost of your lift pass for the week.

This graph shows the cost of a 6 day adult lift pass covering the whole area.

Portes du Soleil comes in second best in this category.

Remember to book your ski holiday with Absolute Alps and receive an extra 10% discount on the cost of the your ski passes.

 Ski Pass Costs per Kilometre

But what you really want to know is that you are getting value for money with your ski pass.

So yet again we have the Portes du Soleil coming in first place with its fantastic value for money ski pass which costs €0.37 per kilometre of piste.

Which is significantly cheaper than everyone else, with the next closest 27% more expensive and then soaring up to 167% more for the most expensive area located at Alpe D’Huez.

Total Number of Individual Pistes

Variety is supposedly the spice of life and we want lots of different pistes to choose from when we go skiing.

Storming to the top spot with the only area to break the 300 mark is Les Trois Vallees. 330 is a lot, if you skied 6 hours a day for 6 days you would need to average over 9 runs an hour to tick them all off! I think you would need more than 1 holiday to tick them all off.

But a very respectable second place goes to the Portes du Soleil, and as mentioned earlier we should be adding an extra one for the new lifts and piste currently being finished in Chatel.

Highest Ski Lift in Area

Any list of skiing statistics wouldn’t be complete without a mention of height of the ski area.

A good win for Espace Killy here, which towers in at 3550 metres.

But we all know that size isn’t everything, don’t we ?

Go too high and it’ll be too cold in the winter, too white on cloudy days with no trees to help navigate.

So although Portes du Soleil looks a little low on the graph with average snowfall of 8 metres and plenty of tree lined runs for the white out days I think it’s a perfect height!

Conclusion – Portes du Soleil is the BEST !

Well I think my carefully selected statistics, were Portes du Soleil comes top twice & second twice, clearly show that my home ski domain is the best in France. But really I think you should come and see for yourself, and while skiing in one of the best ski domains why not stay in one of the best chalets in France – Chalet Les Trois Canards.

Hope to see you soon

Firstly here’s a link to the newly issued Portes du Soleil piste map for 2015, which has been updated to show the new lifts and pistes for the coming season. Check out the pink “NEW” stars showing the recent upgrades!

Chatel & Pre-la-Joux Area

Starting with the local ski area.

New Ski-Lifts & Pistes between Linga and Super-Chatel

As mentioned in my earlier post the long talked about and anticipated link between the Chatel’s two ski areas is finally being built.

The latest updates to this are:

• Both lifts will be the high speed detachable type, the initial plan was for one of the lifts to be a refurbished older style slow lift but there will now be a brand new 6 person detachable up to Super-Chatel called “Portes du Soleil” and a refurbished 4 person detachable going to Linga called “Gabelou”.
• The blue piste from Linga to Gabelou has been totally reshaped from the old windy track into a broad and fairly straight piste, making it easy for beginners to return to Chatel.
• The project is reportedly currently running a little behind schedule and is reported looking at a January opening. There has been an official announcement saying it will definitely be open this winter but the opening date has not been confirmed yet.

New Magic Carpets for Chatel

• The beginner rope pull drag lifts at Super-Chatel and Pre-la-Joux have both been removed and are currently being replaced with new Magic Carpet style lifts. This will be a massive improvement for all the beginners in Chatel, making it much easier to use the nursery slopes. I don’t think anybody will miss the old rope pull, apart from whose who liked the feeling of having their arms pulled out their sockets!

Another little improvement for beginners at Pre-la-Joux is they have reshaped the piste which runs from the main car park & the Perdrix Blanche restaurant back down towards the new magic carpet. The first section of this nearest the restaurant had an off camber turn that could draw beginners into the dreaded orange netting, leaving them embarrassed, tangled and sliding down towards the river! Hopefully no more of that.

Avoriaz & Super-Morzine Area

Big works have been happening here all summer to replace 2 key lifts linking Avoriaz to Morzine

Upgrading Proclou lift to 6 person

The Proclou lift is always very popular because it serves the huge and gentle beginner piste that runs down from Avoriaz towards Super-Morzine, even thou it was a 4 person detachable there could often be large queues at the bottom. This upgrade should sort that problem out, allowing the beginners to keep cruising around the big motorway blue and all the through traffic heading from Morzine back to Avoriaz.

Upgrading Séraussaix lift to 6 person

The upgrade of this lift from an old style slow 4 person to the latest 6 person should really help the Super-Morzine area get some more traffic. The previous slow lift was a real drag to use, but the new lift will give rapid access to Super-Morzine and the top has been repositioned a little higher to enable direct skiing across to the Zore pistes.

Cutting out the need to descend to button lift and back up to Zore. A great help to beginners because the whole Super-Morzine area has some lovely wide blue pistes which are great for gaining confidence and perfecting your turns.

Plus one of my favourite restaurants is at the bottom of the Zore piste, La Grenouille du Marais

As always get in touch with Absolute Alps and we can help organise your next Portes du Soleil ski holiday.

The new centre called Forme d’O is a combination of pools / gym and spa areas, all finished to a very high standard.

During Summer and Winter seasons the centre will be open 7 days a week.

Inside it’s divided into 3 separate areas; the indoor & outdoor “Aquatic” swimming pools / “Oceane” adults only pool and spa area / “Fitness” gym area.

Aquatic Area

Features an indoor pool which goes from 40cm to 120cm complete with bubbles, perfect for children to play and enjoy. Plus an area marked out with 25 metre swimming lanes for those wishing to practise some serious swimming.

The outdoor 200m² swimming area is accessed by a connecting water tunnel, here you will have magnificent views across the valley even in the winter because the pool is heated year round. There are hydro-massage jets and bubble beds around the pool, with hot tub areas to relax in too, plus a swim against the current area.

Oceane Area

No children are allowed in this area, so I think it’s safe to say the noise levels will be a fair bit lower than the main swimming pools.

There is a 125m² swimming pool at 120cms depth with waterfalls and bubble beds.

Two traditional Hammam with starry ceiling to steam away any aches and pains.

Three different sauna rooms which are varying in temperature, plus a mineral solarium room and a relaxation room.

Also available are various beauty treatments and massages, offered in 4 separate treatment rooms complete with individual showers.

Fitness Area

This 100m² cardio room features all the latest fitness equipment including rowing machines, running machine and cross-trainers.

There are various different fitness classes offered during the week ranging from Aquabiking / Aquazen / Aquafusion.

This whole centre will undoubtedly be a great benefit to Chatel, especially on bad weather days during the winter ski season.

Remember that French swimming pools like to enforce swimming trunks and NO swimming shorts policy, and here too you’ll have to remember to bring your Speedos. Which most Brits do find a bit of a strange policy, but it’s the same for everyone and once your in the pool nobody notices.

Super-Chatel to Lac Vonnes

As you can see from this image there will be a new 1500 meter blue piste coming from Super-Chatel down to Lac Vonnes which will be fitting with snow cannons.
The chairlift will be the 4-person high speed detachable type, and some of you may even have ridden this exact same chair before because it is coming from the Proclou in Avoriaz which is being upgraded to a 6-person lift this summer.

Lac Vonnes to Linga

Heading over in the other direction towards Linga there will be no new piste, you’ll need to ride the chair in both directions to link up with the existing blue piste.

This chair is also reusing some old equipment, the 4-person Plaine  Dranse chair from the Pré-la-Joux area. Which was made pretty much redundant a couple of years ago with the upgrade of the Rochasson chair. This is only an old style non-detachable chair so you’ll have plenty of time to admire the views across Chatel village !

This blue piste link to the Linga area did used to be a little locals secret as there was parking for a dozen or so cars at the end of road and you can ski straight to the Linga gondola. But I don’t think that’ll be an option anymore!

Great Benefits

There are multiple benefits to Chatel resort from this new development

• Linking the Super-Chatel and Linga areas gives people much more freedom to explore each ski area and easily ski between them. Previously people coming from the Avoriaz direct and heading to Super-Chatel needed to take the shuttle bus and walk up to the gondola but now it’ll be much more fun to ski directly between the two areas.
• Reduce the demand on the shuttle buses, many less people should now need to take bus from Pré-la-Joux to Chatel. Which should reduce the congestion that often occured at the start and finish of the day.
• People staying at the Lac Vonnes end of the village will now be able to walk to/from the lifts, whilst others will only need quick shuttle bus to the village centre.

We hope to see you out here next season to experience our new link

I’m most excited about the new Pointe de L’Au chairlift because the ancient, slow and very long 2-person chair it’s replacing was by far the worst lift in the whole of the PDS. It was a bottleneck between Champoussin and Les Crosets, which regularly managed to create massive snake like queues even when there wasn’t that many people around.
But the new high speed 4-person will make a massive difference for everyone exploring the great pistes on the Swiss side of the PDS, which are always a lot quieter than the main area between Avoriaz and Pres-la-Joux. The Swiss side has now had 4 new lifts in the last 4 years; 2 in Les Crosets, 1 in Morgins last year and now this one.
Along with the piste enhancements which happen along with the lifts the skiing on the Swiss side has really improved in the last few years, its’ infrastructure was poor in comparison to the French side but now it’s right up there and people should definitely spend some time exploring the area.

New Morzine Pleney Telecabin

This is main lift from Morzine village up to the slopes and regularly had a fairly decent queue as people tried to squeeze into the old style little 4-6 person bubbles.
They have been very busy this year ripping out the old Telecabin stations to build new ones which will be running shiny new 10 person cabins. With an impressive capacity of 3000 persons/hr it should keep the queues to a minimum. That’s 50 people per minute which is roughly a bus full.
I hope they’ve redesigned it reduce the number stairs you needed to climb, it always amazed me that whoever designed the old one it thought it would be a good idea to make everyone climb about 30 stairs at both the top and bottom stations! Why not design the lift to be a little longer so to reach the ground and let you out at the top where you need to be?

New Avoriaz Prodains Express Cable Car

Avid readers of my blog (not sure if there any ) might notice that this replacement lift was meant to be running last season, with an advertised opening of early February 2013. Well that didn’t quite happen, although it did finally open for last couple of weeks of the season in April 2013. So not many people actually got to ride last winter, but it’s there now and ready for the first day of winter 2014.
Again a great improvement over the old 66 person box cable car which was OK if you happened to arrive just before it was about to depart, although my pet gripe of having stairs and an elevator to battle with didn’t help. But all too often you just missed one and had to spend 20-30 minutes waiting for the next one.
The new cable car has the latest technology which uses multiple 35 person cabins that are constantly moving round, it’s built at ground level to be almost ski on and at the top a very convenient escalator takes you a final few metres out on to the slopes.

New St. Jean d’Aulps Drag lift “Du Lac”

The final new development is a drag lift in the St.Jean d’Aulps area, which is designing to help people wishing to complete the Roc d’Enfer loop. The final section of the loop down the red Follys piste was relatively flat and often had poor snow, this new lift will enable skiers to avoid this final section and join the red La Grande Terche piste back to St.Jean d’Aulps.
I have to admit that despite 8 seasons in the PDS I’ve never made over to the Roc d’Enfer, it’s just too far away from Chatel! But it sounds like this is a good improvement to the area and a benefit to the PDS as a whole.

This season has produced great conditions pretty much every week, and for a period at the start of February I’d say conditions were as good as they ever get.

We started on high at the beginning of December with deep powder covering the mountain and resort, our first lucky clients staying the week before Christmas had a great time on very quiet and very snowy pistes.

A little bit of rain just before Christmas did flatten down the waist deep powder a little but the festival spirit was definitely not dampened down. It was a very busy Christmas and New Year in the resort with the holidays falling mid week again after a couple of slightly quieter year when they fell on the weekend, but with the great snow cover and massive expanse of the Portes du Soleil to discover lift queues are never too bad here.

We were treated to a fair few sunny days at the start of January which was nice see, mixed in with more snow. The January quiet lull arrived and we could enjoy the mountain with great snow conditions but relatively few holiday makers, often my favourite time of the season to ski because of the empty pistes and good chance of fresh snow fall.

The end of January brought a massive storm sweeping across Europe, initially very high winds and driving rain pretty high up the mountain. But after that first day which was pretty much a write-off for skiing it just snowed and snowed and snowed for a week solid. The off piste was amazing with powder on top of powder on top of more powder, I would say conditions were definitely as good as they ever get out here. When the sun finally came out temperatures remained cold and the mountain was an awesome playground, the perfect time get the biggest skis you could find and head out for big fun.

The cold conditions have stuck around which has meant the pistes have stayed in great shape during the busy school holiday weeks, moguls have been s few and far between on the pistes.

All in all its been great season, looking forward to a great March too. Even without any more snow there is plenty of great skiing to come, but I’m sure we’ll be treated to a few more powder days.

We still have some availability in April and with the great snow coverage there will be plenty left by then. Get in touch with Absolute Alps Holidays to organise your late ski break.

I would definitely say that more and more people are wearing them each year on the slopes, a recent survey said that up to 77 percent of British skiers now claim to wear a ski helmet and that’s up from 62 percent just a couple of years ago in 2010. 77 percent is pretty impressive figure and I would be very interested to know how that figure breaks down by age group.  Parents usually insist on children wearing them and it’s an essential cool piece of kit for most snowboarders too.

This year a major ski insurer, Essential Travel,  has become the first in the UK company is insist that all ski insurance policy holders must wear a helmet on the slopes. This created quite a fuss in newspapers and on-line, but was it just a publicity stunt ? or just sound advise ?

So what are the arguments for and against ?

I’ll say at this stage that always wear a ski helmet and have done for years, I don’t often fall and can’t remember the last time I hit my head hard. But that’s not really the point, if hard head falls were normal then we would be having a different debate. The point is that I see people injured almost every time I spend a day on the mountain, however they came to be injured it’s a fact that by wearing a helmet they are reducing their chances of sustaining a serious head injury.

I find wearing a ski helmet feels completely natural now, it keeps my head warm on cold days and provides protection from the sun on warm days. It holds my goggles on place perfectly and I never have any problems with them steaming up if I need to take them off and put them on the top of the helmet. With so many designs out there on the market now it shouldn’t be a problem for everyone to find a perfect fitting one.

Accidents occur for many reasons, sometimes its your own fault and other times it could be someone else to blame. But if you are wearing a helmet then chances of serious head injury are massively reduced.

I’ve heard people say that wearing a helmet reduces your awareness of what’s going on around you, but I don’t agree with that at all. Modern helmet design has flowed down from high level sports such as motor racing so with a well-fitting helmet there are no issues with either vision or hearing in my opinion.

The other thing talked about is whether the wearing a helmet gives some people a false sense on security and so encourages rise taking, I would say this is definitely a real effect but for the majority of people it is not a massive effect and can be counteracted with some sensible advise.

So with Christmas coming up get a ski helmet added to your wish list, they’re not expensive and could save you a very serious life changing injury.

Be safe everyone, and if you’re still looking for the perfect ski chalet for next seasons holiday get in touch as we still few weeks available.

Traditionally that decision would be made in the ski shop with a little help from the staff who worked there and who would hopefully be able to offer you advise on the best skis for your ability and preferred terrain. Of course not all ski staff are helpful and everyone should have a some basic knowledge of different ski types and how to choose a ski suited to their individual style.

Most stores will offer 3 or 4 different categories of ski, so which should you choose ?

The most basic differences in skis is how fast you expect to ski with them and where you plan to use them;

Categories of Ability

>>A beginner ski will be flexible and forgiving – designed for making lots of short radius slow speed turns. This will make learning the basics skiing much easier

>>An intermediate ski will be designed to be used at a higher speed whilst making longer radius parallel carving turns. The ski will probably be stiffer to give greater stability at higher speed

>>An advanced ski will definitely be designed for parallel carving turns, but the these will be divided again into the type of terrain which you expect to ski;

Categories of Terrain

>>On-piste race skis are totally focused on making perfect carving turns down the piste, they are very responsive and will bite hard into the piste.

>>Freestyle skis are designed for the snowpark, shortish in length and with twin tips (allowing easy backwards skiing) these are for impressing the crowds in park.

>>Off-piste skis will be long and wide (or “fat” in ski speak), they allow you to ride through deep powder snow without sinking.

>>All mountain skis are a compromise of on and off piste performance, they will carve well on the piste but are fat enough to be able to explore the off piste too.

Choosing a style of ski to suit your ability and where you plan to ski will make a big difference to enjoyment of your ski holiday.

Top Tips

>>Beginners should always have beginner skis, taking an advanced ski with not mean you’ll ski more advanced it will mean you’ll struggle to control the skis.

>>An intermediate skier will find it more difficult to progress if they stick with beginner skis, as you ski faster and make bigger turns a beginner ski will feel a bit floppy & not give you the control you need.

>>An advanced skier will be more able to notice the difference between difference models of ski, so choosing a ski for type of terrain they’ll be exploring will add to their enjoyment.

We received a surprise parcel in the post the other day, inside was a small plaque from TripAdvisor to display in our chalet commemorating our achievement of winning a Certificate of Excellence for 2012.

I’m sure they’ve already sent me a certificate, although I’m not sure where I put it !

But it’s good to see the gifts are getting bigger, first a paper certificate, second a small plaque, I wonder what could be next ?  Maybe a giant banner to hang outside the chalet ?

Anyway thanks again to all our guests from last ski season who took the time to write all the fantastic comments we received.

Looking forward to another great season and to welcoming more guests to Chalet Les Trois Canards.

We had a little snow falling in Chatel a couple of days ago and the mountains are currently all white, winter is definitely just round the corner now.

I’m busy working my way through my to-do list of everything that needs doing before the winter.

Get in touch if you’re thinking about your next ski trip, we’ve still got several weeks available and would love to show you why we won our Certificate of Excellence.