Ongoing Ski Lift Upgrades For This Coming Winter - Part 1

Hi everyone and welcome to another post from your favourite blogging Méribel Ski Instructor. This time it will be much more ski related than the last few posts over the summer. As many of you will be aware, I was very fortunate to spend some time in Méribel this summer. During this period I kept an eye on what was going on up the mountain in relation to the ski lift infrastructure. So without further ado, let's dive into the first ski lift upgrade ....

Several years ago, before Covid hit, it was announced that the Côte Brune chairlift was going to be upgraded. A date was set but sadly this slipped, until last summer. Before last winter, the bases for the new pylons were installed, and then work started in earnest to take out the old chairlift this spring. Work continued with the new lift into the summer. This time the Côte Brune will be a ten person bubble, instead a four person chairlift. A big upgrade.

The top of this lift goes all the way up to the Col de la Chambre. This Col is the main link over to Val Thorens from the Méribel Valley, and also an important link for Les Menuires. Queues would form, and also for the first half of the winter when the sun stayed low and often hidden behind a ridge, the old chairlift was very cold indeed. A bubble will make the ride up more comfortable. A win win.

Some key facts are: this will cost €25 million, the lift will travel at 7 metres a second, carrying 2,400 people an hour, with a travel time at 4 minutes and 36 seconds. The base and top stations are located at the same position as the old chairlift, with the main building being much larger at the bottom. The bubbles will be going to bed at night, or during bad weather, down at the bottom. I'm please that I bothered to hike up and take a look, seeing it (and taking these photos) in person was quite impressive. Granted it looks like a building site at the moment, but I can't wait to see and use it in just around two and a half months time.

Now let's leave the Méribel Valley behind, and pop over to Courchevel 1850. This coming winter we will be treated to a brand new Chenus bubble. The Chenus is one of the three bubbles that are located in the Croisette building, with Verdons and the Jardin Alpin being the other two. However, the Chenus has now left this building, and has a slightly higher base station directly on the piste. If you can picture skiing down into 1850 as normal towards these ski lifts, stay left and ski underneath a footbridge that enables you to go down to Courchevel Le Praz, Courchevel Village (also known as 1550), or the Plantrey chairlift. This footbridge that you ski under, is where I was stood taking the following photo looking back up the piste to the new base station, with the Croisette building on the left.

This new version is a significant upgrade. The old Chenus was a rickety old four person bubble, and even that was quite a squeeze, which required all sorts of gymnastics to load and unload. This information banner on the fence of the building site confirms that it will now be a ten person bubble, has a capacity of 2,400 people an hour (just like the Côte Brune mentioned earlier), and only has eleven pylons instead of thirty from the previous version.

The Chenus is now effectively covering for two ski lifts, with the other being the Coqs chairlift (located at the bottom of the Biollay chairlift). Granted, the Coqs lift barely ran the last few winters, and only during the very busy weeks. With the top station of Coqs being next door to the top of the Chenus bubble, it was deemed as not being needed. So the Coqs is no more, it was taken out at the start of the summer!

The top station of the Chenus is now really quite sizeable, or some would say huge. If you look at the photo below, the white building on the bottom left, behind the white and black crane, is the Bagatelle mountain restaurant. It gives you an idea of the size of this new structure.

This next photo is from a different viewpoint, and enables you to see the white Bagatelle mountain restaurant again, this time on the right hand side.

I think this is a very big improvement indeed, and may well take some traffic away from the Plantrey as well, we will see. Courchevel 1850, Courchevel La Tania and the return trip back to the Méribel will all benefit from this upgrade.

Having said that, there's only so many times we can look at photos of building sites, even if they are up the mountain. So here's a photo from last winter to confirm what all of this building work is about........ skiing.

Thanks Tom, just the ticket. Right that'll do for now, I'll release Part 2 in this series in about a weeks time with some more building site photos!?! I hope you enjoyed this post, which confirms that the 3 Valleys ski area keeps reinvesting on the mountain. As ever, don't forget to Live With Passion. Martin.