Arabella Mileham dons her marigolds to revisit life as a seasonnaire and report on the snow conditions in Verbier - February 13, 2010
I’ve definitely just stepped back in time. Half-term week was looming fast when I answered a plea to come out to Verbier for a week to fill in for a chef who’s had to return to the UK (it’s that time of the season when chalet staff are like in high demand as half of them have falled ill or fallen over) So I find myself back in rubber gloves, oven-timer in one hand, laptop in the other and acting as a chef for 12 guests, while trying to snatch the odd hour to sub-edit the latest snow blogs for welove2ski and check out the conditions on the slopes. (Hey, although this is a working holiday, someone’s got to do it!).
Unfortunately I seem to have just missed a fresh patch of powder that fell on the 4 vallées at the end of last week – Bruson in particular has been awesome (or so I’m told) and should be the best place to head to at the end of next week, when another dump is expected. However, it was lightly snowing when I first arrived (Thursday afternoon) and the temperatures have been around minus 10, so the conditions have remained pretty good, although increasingly tracked out and mogully in the afternoon.
Friday was a bluebird day but bitterly cold and punctuated with a fair amount of glittery mist - it looks lovely but pretty much hits you in the face on chair-lifts, freezing your nose before heading towards your fingers and toes. Before I got just too damn chilly to even breathe, I had a great couple of hours warming up, starting over by Lac de Vaux, Atelas and then Ruinettes, skiing all around La Chaux for a while, before heading up to the base of Mont Fort (though I thought it wise to err on the cautious side so early on in the week and therefore had to wuss out of the mogul field in front of me, as inviting as it looked.).
Click here for welove2ski's Verbier resort report.
I’ve definitely just stepped back in time. Half-term week was looming fast when I answered a plea to come out to Verbier for a week to fill in for a chef who’s had to return to the UK (it’s that time of the season when chalet staff are like in high demand as half of them have falled ill or fallen over) So I find myself back in rubber gloves, oven-timer in one hand, laptop in the other and acting as a chef for 12 guests, while trying to snatch the odd hour to sub-edit the latest snow blogs for welove2ski and check out the conditions on the slopes. (Hey, although this is a working holiday, someone’s got to do it!).Unfortunately I seem to have just missed a fresh patch of powder that fell on the 4 vallées at the end of last week – Bruson in particular has been awesome (or so I’m told) and should be the best place to head to at the end of next week, when another dump is expected. However, it was lightly snowing when I first arrived (Thursday afternoon) and the temperatures have been around minus 10, so the conditions have remained pretty good, although increasingly tracked out and mogully in the afternoon.
Friday was a bluebird day but bitterly cold and punctuated with a fair amount of glittery mist - it looks lovely but pretty much hits you in the face on chair-lifts, freezing your nose before heading towards your fingers and toes. Before I got just too damn chilly to even breathe, I had a great couple of hours warming up, starting over by Lac de Vaux, Atelas and then Ruinettes, skiing all around La Chaux for a while, before heading up to the base of Mont Fort (though I thought it wise to err on the cautious side so early on in the week and therefore had to wuss out of the mogul field in front of me, as inviting as it looked.). The queues weren’t too big, but next week will be mega-busy as the half-term hoards descend. Bearing that in mind, I skied over at Savoleyres on Saturday in an attempt to avoid the crowds. The slopes didn’t seem too packed but there was the odd wait at the chair-lifts, which is quite unusual over there. I didn’t manage to find any powder but kept to the pistes, which were pretty fast, with good snow but a few patches of ice in places. After playing on the south facing slopes, I blasted down to Tzoumaz, eventually skiing back to Verbier via Carrefour as the valley was shrouded in mist.
Ah, there are some views you just don’t tire of…
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