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How will winter 2016 be remembered?

A mild season with great snow to the end

featured in Snow report Author Caroline Sayer, Meribel Reporter Updated

The season is gradually drawing to a close. In little over a week, the last lifts will shut and the resort will empty of visitors. May and June are quiet months, when the snow melts and the valley turns green, and the locals take a well-earned break. Come July, the resort will awake from its slumbers and the two-month long summer season will begin.

2015-16 will be remembered as a strange season but, overall, a good one. The start was shaky: snow depths in December were only just adequate, and the pistes over Christmas and New Year were hard and not all were open. The snow started falling in earnest at New Year and then carried on throughout the season, giving continuously good conditions all the way from January to the end of March. In mild April, the snow finally turned to spring snow, though snow depths remained excellent. 

What made this an unusual season was the mildness. Cold weeks were noticeably absent. The sun was notably absent too: this winter, we saw day after day of grey, cloudy and mild weather. It rained a lot at resort level. The wind blew. Then it rained again. This was the mildest winter in France since 1900. In Les 3 Vallées, these warmer temperatures resulted in a massive difference between snow depths at the top of the slopes, where snow fell, and in the resorts, where it often rained. As I write, on April 15th, there is nearly 2.50m of snow on the top of Cime Caron, but my garden at 1450m is already green and blooming.

It’s during less-than-perfect seasons like this one, that we most appreciate the fantastic 3 Vallées ski area. Other, lower ski areas suffered badly at the start of this winter, some remaining closed for weeks, while here we were skiing happily from early December onwards. The lift companies’ massive investment in state-of-the-art snow cannons and groomers meant they could create good pistes when natural snow was thin on the ground and then maintain the snow throughout difficult weather. And because so many of our pistes are situated at high altitude, most of our runs benefitted from the snow high up and kept great snow on them all season.  

The past two winters have been relatively mild and wet. If this is due to global warming, then our resort is well placed to meet the challenges. As we look ahead, the next big worry for our resort is a possible Brexit and the impact it would have on the ski chalet industry.  Many operators say they wouldn’t be able to provide affordable chalet holidays if they can no longer employ staff on UK contracts.  Will 2016 be remembered not was a great snow year, but the year when the chalet holiday received its death-blow? We await the vote in June with some anxiety.

If you have never visited the Alps in summer, may I politely suggest you consider it? The resort is even more beautiful in summer than winter and there is a wealth of activities to enjoy from golf to tennis with walking and swimming and adventure courses and via ferrata and kids' clubs and much more. See you this summer on the slopes?

Location

Map of the surrounding area