Les Portes du Soleil

The last few weeks have been really hectic at work, so when I took a look at my calendar and realised I could take a day off to recover I took advantage of it to head onto the ski slopes for the first time this season.

I thought about going back to Verbier or Les Diablerets, which are both quite close by, but settled on Champéry/Les Portes du Soleil, since it is only 45 minutes from where we live in Vevey, and well recommended by some friends at work.

In the morning as I was driving to the resort I ended up driving through thick fog and I felt like I was going to have a miserable day skiing in white-out conditions. Once I got a bit of altitude, though, I popped up through the cloud into a lovely clear day.

I drove through to Les Crosets, one of the gateway points for the resort, where I parked and hopped immediately onto an express lift right up the mountain.

The resort is amazingly huge, and actually traverses the Swiss/French border, so the first thing I did, of course, was to ski into France too see if it was any different (not really).

Being the first day of skiing of the season, I was pretty much exhausted by about 2pm and headed home before I injured myself. Once again I was blown away by the minimum of effort required to do something amazing in Switzerland.