Morzine Snow Report: 1st December 2011
And, finally, snow forecast for the weekend and into next week
The ski season is fast approaching here in Morzine. The weather forecast is conforming with a prediction of snow this Friday, over the weekend and into the following week. Great news given that the scheduled start of the season is 10th December.
This week the weather has been sunny, very cold but with a disappointing lack of precipitation. The active disturbance due Friday should see snow down to 1000m - approximately resort level. Just to whet, the appetite the Portes du Soleil typically gets 751 cm of snowfall on average each year, one of the best snow records in the Alps.
My experience of the past few seasons has been that the snow is late to arrive but, when it does, we get a considerable dump of snow concentrated over a number of days, often leading to some of the best powder days of the season in December. Fingers crossed for more of the same this time around.
The ski area itself will be little changed in terms of pistes this coming season but we are expecting a couple of new lifts to come on line. The old Rochassons and Plaine Dranse chair lifts out of Plaine Dranse (accessing the wider Linga secteur) are being replaced by a six person express chair, more than doubling the capacity to 3000 people per hour. And a replacement of the Grand-Conche chair lift and the Grand-Conche drag lift with a new high speed 6 place chairlift will make access around Les Crosets much quicker. This is very welcome news as the old system was a bit of a bottle neck on busier ski days.
In general we are seeing year on year investment in the ski infrastructure, last year the new Chamossiere six person chair made a huge difference in reaching the Chamossiere peak for excellent black and red runs (and some brilliant off piste.) Likewise the new Grand Combe eight person chair gets you to the top of the Hauts Forts secteur in Avoriaz in a fraction of the time of the old Combe du Machon lift. L’Écho Alpin lift in Linga has done the same for those retracing their steps from the bottom of the super long and steep Le Linga red.
Something else to look forward to is the scheduled replacement of the Prodains telepherique although this will not be running until the start of the 2012 season. The work began in July of this year on the construction of a new 3s cable car to replace the existing telepherique, which will transport visitors and skiers up from the Prodains Valley out of Morzine in greater speed and comfort.
The top terminal will be buried to enable better organization of the surface flow of pedestrians and skiers on to place Jean Vuarnet in Avoriaz. The new cable car will have 12 cabins, each with a capacity of 35, and so will be able to carry between 2000 and 2400 people per hour.
It’s great to see all this investment in the ski area which already boasts some pretty impressive stats - 283 slopes: 27 black, 104 red, 117 blue and 35 green covering 650km of piste using 197 ski lifts.
Writing this has got me all super enthusiastic for the coming season, I’m off to dust down the skis and check the condition of the wax and edges, I want to be ready to go at a moment’s notice!
