| Finlays Blog | Val d’Isere Diary | Courchevel Diary | La Plagne Diary |
See below a selection of bits and pieces of news from Finlays, our ski resorts, our catered chalets and the world of skiing and snowboarding.
We have always had a dedicated page on our site for daily weather forecasts direct from our three ski resorts (Val d’Isere, Courchevel and La Plagne) see; Snow Conditions but in addition we now have a Twitter page for each resort where we will post daily snow reports, weather & ski conditions. Once the season is up and running these may come direct form the pistes – if we can suss out the technology!
See: Valdisere Snow, Courchevel Snow and Les Coches Snow.
Self Catered Ski Holidays
We have one self catered apartment on our ski holiday programme; apartment Hirondelle but we can also offer chalets Grand Cerf, Foxtrot and Foret on a self catered basis. Prices start from £3395 for a complete chalet sleeping up to 8, and include the accommodation, linen & towels. Do ring for more information – 01573 226611.
Snow Train News
Rail Europe will not be running the Snow Train next season. They have said ‘As I am sure you can appreciate, this is not a decision that Rail Europe has taken lightly. A combination of escalating operational costs, the current economic climate and the weakening of the Pound against the Euro, has resulted in the decision that the service is not commercially viable for the coming season.’ As far as we know the Overnight Eurostar & Daytime Eurostar trains will be running see our travel page for details of these two options.
Winter Flights
Our flights are now sorted for the forthcoming winter season. We are delighted to have secured morning flights - See Travel details for timings etc.
Interesting!
Have just read a couple of interesting articles by Peter Hardy, editor of www.welove2ski.com, co-author of Hardy’s Skiing & Snowboarding Guide, Ski Correspondent for The Daily Telegraph & the Daily Mail and generally thought to be one of the best ski journalists, he is writing about the fact that ski companies are all cutting their programmes for next winter so there will be fewer catered chalet holidays around for the 2009/2010 winter season. We have dropped about 18% of our capacity so from our perspective his article is accurate and we wholeheartedly agree BOOK NOW for next season!
To read the articles click through to The Editors Blog and scroll down to:
Humping skis – 5/6/2009 and further down to Carnage and condoms 13/5/2009 actually all the recent articles are worth reading!
Winter Season 2009-2010
All information is live on the website you can see up to date availability on the Holiday Prices page or Book Online NOW. As always we are delighted to discuss your requirements or to give a quote over the ‘phone, ring - 01573 226611.
Fully Bonded Tour Operator
As a Tour Operator offering package holidays; should an airline that we have booked flights with go into liquidation we will source alternative travel arrangements.
We now have live webcams of our three ski resorts on our website. Click through to each resort page and scroll down to the bottom or that page:
VAL D’ISERE, COURCHEVEL & LA PLAGNE.
Weekend & Short Skiing Breaks
We will once again be operating our W/E & short break programme to hotels in resorts in both France and Switzerland. See our Weekend Ski Break page for more information.
Snow record for winter 2008/2009
27th -28th April – Karen says ‘Snow galore just keeps falling‘. The return of winter, with Val tourist office reporting 50cms of fresh snow and a snow rain limit of 1500m.
20th April – quite a heavy snowfall in Val d’Isere with at least 20cms of snow. And once again Val had the snow and Courchevel & La Plagne none! See Val d’Isere – The Weather today!!!
16th April – a very snowy day in all three resorts with many remarks about the amazing size of the snowflakes see: Val d’Isere – It’s Snowing!!! Courchevel – Ooooh, its snowing again… The return of wintery conditions and once again Val d’Isere had much more snow than either Courchevel or La Plagne with the Le Fornet end of Val d’Isere having the most with ‘shin to knee high powder’. It has been a bit of a theme this winter with storms blowing up from Italy and the snow falling on the French Italian border.
End of March – 15th April a spell of changeable and unpredictable weather, lots of wonderful days of sunshine and blue skies and some murky days and even some rain. The forecasters came in for some stick during this period getting it way off on occasion – predicting grey skies & rain when all resorts were bathed in sunshine! Actually we think it’s great that the weather can still surprise us!
24th – 26th March – a windy few days with snow falling for a lot of the time, hard to tell how much fell because of the wind – anywhere between 10 – 25 cms. Karen in Val d’Isere said ‘In places the new snow is up to my knees, in others it barely covers the soles of my shoes!’ Gill in Les Coches said ‘Yippee, some snow…!‘ and Ann in Courchevel ‘Lovely new snow!‘
14th – 18th March – a full week of sunshine and spring like conditions – beautiful
5th – 10th March - a very snowy period! It was interspersed with some sunny days but overall probably about 70 cms fell. This fall has set the resorts up for great skiing right into April. See: Dumping it down! & Loads more snow! (Courchevel), Some very welcome snow… (La Plagne) & Pristine Off-Piste (Val d’Isere).
14th / 15th Feb – bitingly cold temperatures, minus 22 recorded in Courchevel!
6th / 7th / 8th Feb – some top ups of snow of about 10 – 45 cms at a time. Enough to keep the pistes in good condition but also enough to cause the women’s World Championship downhill in Val d’Isere to be cancelled. Strangely more snow fell in Courchevel than Val d’Isere see “Snow lots of it!”
23rd & 24th January - quite a big dump of between 40cms and a metre. For a first hand view read the following blog posts; Umm, not a good day for shopping! and Totally Dumping.
19th/20th January 2009 – a lovely top of up of 15- 20cms in all three our resorts see.. Snow!, How wrong can the weather forecast be? and More Snow….
14th/15th/16th December a big storm came through and a HUGE amount of snow fell well over a metre in Val d’Isere. Strangely it was a storm coming up from Italy and sat on the border and this snow fell in Val d’Isere but not our other resorts or Courchevel & La Plagne.
10th December more fresh snow ‘…a truly snowy day in Val d’Isere..’
5th/6th December a really big storm came through and left behind heaps of wonderful fresh snow about 60cm in the town centres of Val d’Isere & Courchevel. Courchevel opened on the 6th so a great day to start on.
29th November – Val d’Isere’s opening weekend was a perfectly stunning, 80% of the of the pistes were open the best start to a season for many a year – for confirmation read Peter Hardy’s welove2ski posting.)
24th November - It snowed heavily in all our resorts over the W/E with most having about half a metre on Saturday and in Val d’Isere ‘another 40cms of powder!’ overnight on Sunday.
30th October – lots of snow fell across the Alps, in Val d’Isere & Courchevel 1850 there was about 15cms and it looked wonderfully wintery. It did all disappear from the towns but on the mountain tops it remained. The mountains looked stunning and ready for skiers see: Val d’Isere mountain tops or La Plagne mountain tops.
CLICK HERE - for older / previous items of ski holiday info and news..
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