It didn’t look that nice a day when we left this morning but the cloud cleared quite nicely and it turned into a great day.
We actually parked at Saanen but it’s all part of the same ski area and you park right next to the 4-man chair lift.

I’d actually never been on the very top lift at Rougemont, it’s just a short cable-car to the summit of La Videmanette, normally we just take the main cable car from the car park but from the top of the new Chalberhöni the slope looked too good to miss.

There’s some more photo’s in the gallery.

A quick few hours at Les Bugnenets - Savagnières in the Jura. I’ve got some new boots to try so this is ideal place to try them.

The station is 100% open with all the lifts running and the pistes are in a great condition. It’s a bit heavy off-piste with wet snow and some crust in places.

The size of the car park gives and indication of how big the station is :

Today was actually busy, it’s ski week for some of the schools so there was a lot of groups around but no pressure at all on the pistes or handful of lifts. Quite a nice morning but a shame there was not more sunshine.

Another one of the local stations in the Gruyère region. Charmey like Moléson has a great first lift, in this case an 8 person gondala.

On the right of that photo’ is Moléson that I skied yesterday.

Conditions at Charmey are fairly good, it’s not very high and there’s been some mixed weather recently. Conditions in places could probably be described as spring like.

It’s quite a scenic little station and has some of the same feeling as Jaun which is a bit higher up the Jaunpass.

Towards the bottom though the snow cover does get a little thin

And here’s that great lift with the village of Charmey in the background:

Some more photo’s in the gallery.

Tags: Charmey, switzeland, ski, skiing

As it’s holiday time I decided to go to one of the local stations today, I’d thought about going to Charmey but Moléson were holding the Move and Ride so I’d thought I’d take a look at that.

It’s been snowing and pretty windy for a few days but the temperatures have been relatively high, 6′c as I left home, so a lot of the snow that’s fallen is wet and heavy.

This picture tells the story really.

Lower down, around Lac Gruyère in fact, the snow’s melted and the ice on the lake has melted although it’s too far on this photo’ to see that. But you can see where the wind has stripped some of the snow off the hillside.

That’s the village of Moléson although it’s mostly a collection of holiday cottages

Really Moléson only has 4 lifts, the rather flash funicular above, two t-bars and a téléphérique to the highest point, sadly the téléphérique wasn’t operating today due to high wind. There’s only one run from the top of it but it’s long steep black mostly unprepared and without doubt the best run in the station.

In the end I didn’t see much of the Move and Ride, although I’ve worked there’s the equivalent of a fun run event and I reckon I ought to have a go at it next year

Mostly it’s been overcast all day with some breaks in the cloud, one of which occurred just as I was going home, this is from the hill outside our village looking back at the pre-alpes.

Some more photo’s in the gallery here.