Les Deux Alpes - Summer 2008

It's been much like yesterday but without the rain and the wind today. Mostly sunny, quite warm, but with a fair bit of cloud around too. I've taken 2 pix: one of looking down to the village of Venosc and the other of La Muzelle. It's a bit hard to see in the second photo, but if you compare the high snow with last week - well. I've got a couple of welcome meetings tomorrow, but if I don't manage to get any work (unlikely), I'll have to go up to the glacier one day next week to collect my skis. In that case I'll have a good looksee and take some photos. Next week is our last week of the summer season.

I couldn't take a photo on Sunday because the battery went after I'd been up to the town, but I took this view of l'Y yesterday evening on the way home. I had this really nice view of the 'Venosc mist' at about 07.15 this morning, so I went photo mad and took that one too.

Yesterday I went to a Tourist Office meeting when they presented their plans for publicity in the autumn. The most interesting figures though were that last winter we had nearly 1.5 million person nights, which is roughly 212,000 person weeks. This sound like a lot, but (if my maths work) is only an average of 10,500 odd people per week of the season. Averages being what they are (and all the figures are rough rounding up), apart from the high season weeks, that means that the hill is working well below capacity for the most part = no queues!

the other thing I thought was interesting was that the Brits are now the biggest group of foreign visitors (it used to be the Belgians), however the French still account for 51% of our business which hasn't changed for a while.

I don't know if any of you are interested in this sort of thing, but I thought it might just shed some light of other aspects of your holidays.

Kruisler, I'm afraid to say you'd probably be counted as Britannique, I think it's the place of origin rather than the actual nationality. It's changed a lot since you were last here - expect to be very surprised if you haven't been since the early 90s (when I first came here). Deffo a good place for a lads trip! I'm not sure that it's all that bad for local businesses, more for the ones that don't do the job! Most of the winter season it seems busy enough in the town, and this summer it's been hopping all summer with the mountain bikers. It's just quietening down now in the last week.

Peter Ross, I'm glad

rogg, Yes - fantastic light - dawn really as the blush is the first rays of sun hitting the summits about 1½ hours before we see it on the plateau. Yeah - go on - try us!!

as I was leaving to go to a meeting I saw these parapentes over the Pied Moutet, so I popped back into the house and whipped out a couple of photos - I thought they looked really pretty all flying together.

As I said, I went up yesterday. Really to get my skis, but I thought I might as well have a little ski at the same time! I can't remember when it was so good at the end of the summer season. Although there had clearly been some crevasse repairs in places, and there was a bit of ice peeking through, for the most part it was exceptionally good. It was also virtually empty. I got up there about 11.00 and skied for just over an hour.

firstly I took a pic looking up to the Lauze from the top of the Puy Salie T bar:

I then went over to the north side and took a pic of the Dome Nord looking up from the bottom of that lift

finally I took the classic pic from the terrace of the resto looking up the glacier - looking a bit grey, but this was at 12.30