Snow angel

The Besso's snow angel

Can you see her? Go straight down from the left peak and she's lying on the rock. We've never spotted her before, but this weekend our neighbour pointed her out. Of course she's not always there -and she can vanish overnight.

Incase you still can't see her.....  PK

...she circled in pink.

Look back on winter 2015/16

As the season comes to an early end, it's nice to look back to just some of the epic ski days we had. After a lean start it turned into a great winter.

Direct line

Direct line to Mottec

It took one exciting (and wrong) try to finally work out the direct line back to Mottec. It's taken a while but we've finally done it and it's a new favourite route. Lovely snow, nearly 1500m of continuous descent, some exciting terrain, and a cup of tea waiting at the chalet.  PK

Some great snow...

...and interesting terrain

Marinda - East Face

A new route for us - the east face of the Marinda. Seen from Zinal the face appears to be nearly vertical, however, it proved to be a beautiful ski and with very little skinning.  Happy days :)

Seen from Zinal it seemed almost vertical

The first short skin and ski down to the river

The second skin and lunch on the Basset de Lona

Perfect snow on the first main pitch ... 

and the second

Tree-mendous!

Skiing the trees

The new year arrived with lots of snow - one memorable storm lasting practically the whole week. Things quickly filled in, and we skied the trees like we've never done before. That fabulous sensation of snaking down through the gaps, dropping onto pillows of deep, fluffy, forgiving snow.
As our ski buddy Ray said 'I could hand my pass in now, as it doesn't get better than that' - high praise indeed.

Tree-mendous!

2015's Weather

This has been one of the warmest and driest December's on record (here in Switzerland). Lots of blue sky days and no new snow. So what was the rest of the year like?

January 2015
















Started pretty mild, with rain to over 3000m, then strong winds and not much snow below 1500m. But the upper slopes had some good snow, and the month ended with a 2 day storm.

February 2015

A delicate start, with all the fresh snow on top of some unstable layers - the resort blasted practically every slope to make it safe. Temperatures rose for a mild half-term week. Overall some good skiing

March 2015 

Some great snow and skiing especially if you hiked

April 2015

Some great snow ended the season. However, the overall impression of the winter; not many big dumps of snow - just small storms.

May 2015

The winter snow melted away quite quickly, opening up the walking routes early.

June 2015

Beautiful warm weather, and the meadows were soon a mass of flowers 

July 2015

July was a heat-wave and a fire ban was enforced - this lasted well into August.

August 2015

No fireworks for the 1st August celebrations (despite heavy rain on the day). The heat-wave ended, but fine weather continued with an occasional summer storm bringing much needed rain.

September 2015

The hills were very dry and the grasses golden. Wonderful autumnal walking weather.

October 2015

The larch colours where stunning this year - getting more golden by the day. There was the usual early dusting of snow down to valley which soon melted away.

November 2015

Very little precipitation and the fire ban was brought back in. The autumn colours continued to look stunning. The resort delayed opening for skiers by two weeks - the snow finally arrived around the 20th.

December 2015

Sunny, warm and settled with no new snow. A huge high sat over this part of Europe forcing all the bad weather further north, across the UK and into Scandinavia. 

Skiing - going downhill?

Just come across some interesting statistics published by Laurent Vanet (www.vanat.ch) relating to the ski industry.

Ten years ago, Swiss ski resorts had a total of around 28 million skier days (ie the number of days tickets were bought for), last winter this figure had dropped by 20%. Fewer ticket sales means fewer francs - 10 years ago receipts totalled chf 806,000,000, last year that figure was down 12%, but in real terms that's a drop of 16% in revenue. Those declining numbers have lead to 12 resorts closing during this time.

World wide there are estimated to be 115 million skiers, and each year 80% of skier days took place in just 400 (20%) of possible resorts. So what's business like in a resorts such as here?

This years' annual report by the Grimentz-Zinal lift company (www.rma.ch) showed the following. In total the lift company took over chf 15,000,000 from the sale of lift tickets, food & drink in the restaurants it runs, and ski locker rental. It also sold 2% more lift tickets than the previous year. Great news, and we hope it's not just down to the novelty of the new lift, and the fact that Zinal-Grimentz was one of the few places last Christmas to have good snow - only time will tell.

Over chf 15, 000, 000 in revenue 

So over chf 15 million, doesn't sound too bad - but then there are costs, which ate up most of the money (especially with a big investment to service, and to which most of the profit could be written off to). They broke down as follows, with the largest slice going to wages.

and what most of it got spent on

However, one mustn't forget the core ingredient to running a ski business - the weather - and that you can't control. You need bad weather to bring snow, but at the weekend you need blue sky and sunshine to draw the locals who boost ticket sales! What a business...