Preparing for winter in Verbier and St Anton …

A change in season initiates a change in gear … autumn signifies the end of summer (though current sunshine and warm temperatures hardly reflect this) and for us at Bramble Ski the focus shifts to operational planning, ensuring that we’re best prepared to provide the most exceptional holidays possible to our clients visiting our luxury chalets in Verbier and St Anton in the winter ahead.

Detailed organisational charts illustrating the key roles of the central team have been drawn up and circulated; pro-active and re-active roles have been analysed, dissected and transcribed onto numerous pages of a flipchart; we’ve even cleaned up and re-decorated our Verbier office space! We are now within 12 weeks of our first guests’ arrival – time to collect balances and organise the specifics of individual holiday requirements. The countdown has begun and our focus is most certainly on another memorable winter ahead.

With this in mind, the news of potential snow in the Alps this weekend has got some of us thinking about when we’ll get a chance to earn our first turns of the season. But until that time we’ll continue enjoying the fine weather. Yesterday, Duncan and I biked up to the top of the Bruson lift (a vertical ascent of about 1,400m from Le Châble) descended into the valley behind Bruson, following our noses to the small town of Orsières at the foot of the Mont Blanc Massif and returned to Le Châble by way of road. It was a fantastic ride through a landscape of fiery autumn colours in the high tree-line and alpine. Meanwhile Phil, our web designer, cycled up the Val de Bagnes to Lac de Mouvoisin, the 13th highest dam in the world, a round-trip of 50km involving just over 1,800m of vertical ascent.

If you’re coming on a ski holiday this winter, road cycing and cross-country biking are great training! They build strong quadriceps and are excellent cardio-vascular pursuits. Get out there, enjoy autumn and get psyched for the winter ahead.