Méribel Opening Day - December '25

Hi everyone and welcome to the latest post from your favourite blogging Méribel Ski Instructor. Well, the countdown started quite a while ago, and has finally came round for Méribel to open its ski lifts. Ladies and Gentlemen the 2025/26 ski season has officially started. And what a start it has been this year. I've been trying to hide my silly excitement from you recently, why? Because I've really enjoyed my skiing, and the snow conditions from the several days I've had over in Val Thorens. It's been great. But I didn't know what Méribel was going to be like, given the difference in altitude between the two. I needn't have been cautious, all photos were taken on Saturday December 6th.....

I prepared my ski kit the night before, and had also planned and organised my breakfast. When the alarm went off in the morning, it was all systems go. In fact I managed to jump on one of the first Saulire Express bubbles. Now, let's press the pause button here. The Saulire Express isn't always open the first weekend of the season, this shows how much more terrain was open for use this year, and also confirmed that snow conditions were good. It was a bit of a shock at the top however, with a howling gale blowing, and flat light to deal with. But all good after several minutes of skiing when I dropped below these weather conditions.

It was both a relief, and a joy, to feel that the snow was just as nice as over in Val Thorens. The big storm that came in nearly two weeks ago had clearly dropped loads of snow on the mountain. This has enabled the resort to prepare the pistes with both natural and man-made snow.

Another big thing that I noticed, and really surprised me, was that Mont Vallon was open for skiing. Quite often Mont Vallon doesn't open until Christmas week, and sometimes even later. I have never, ever known it to be open the first weekend in December before. I may well be wrong about this statement, but have some confidence. Again, this confirms to me that the mountain has a decent 'base' of snow, or as the French translates this description as a 'sub-layer'. I was skiing with Ian my friend and colleague from the ski school, and we decided to pop up and take a look.

And yes, the snow was lovely up there. Quite often Opening Weekend can be quite hectic, with loads of people getting their first skiing fix of the winter, all completely understandable. There can be ski lift queues, and heavy skier traffic on the pistes. But that didn't happen on Saturday, far from it. Why? Because more terrain opened up the area, and also more ski lifts running helped spread the traffic all over the mountain. It's great that we've had this very good start to the season, and should mean that a high percentage of pistes have a good base of snow already. December can be a funny month with weather, but I guess so can any month of the year! The forecast for this week is sunny weather, which I'm sure we will all enjoy. I hope you enjoyed this post? As ever....... Live With Passion. Martin.