Phil taking a tumble on the slopes | In preparation for our arrival, the town council erected an impressive light display. |
Snowfall outside our balcony | It was snowing pretty hard this morning - 6 inches had fallen overnight. |
Clearing the streets | To keep the streets passable, we have bulldozers working from about 6am... |
Snow dump | ...making 8 foot high piles of snow in the middle of each village square. Every few days, dumper trucks come and take the snow away. |
All lifts closed | Each lift on the mountain has a board showing the status of all the lifts it connects to. A green light indicates an open lift. You'll notice a distinct lack of green lights! |
Queues at the closed left hand lift. The right hand lift was stopped in an icy gale for 30 minutes - full of people! | We sat it out in a cafe for a while, but you'll see the crowds building up waiting for a lift to open. We skied down the mountain, so we don't know if the lift ever opened. High winds and snow at the top of the mountain, and the fact that the mountain team have to detonate a load of explosives to prevent avalanches each day means that the upper lifts don't normally open until late morning. |
