Ho ho ho Christmas in the snow

La Plagne is laying on the Christmas cheer with Santa’s grotto set up in Plagne Centre where you can go and sit with Santa, have your photo taken meet some real reindeer or ride in Santa’s sleigh. Santa’s little helpers are there in force serving up steaming cups of hot chocolate and whipping up sticks of candy floss with such vigour that the air itself is filled with sparkly flecks of blue sugar.

The wishing trees from last year’s Sublicimes festival have been resurrected too and brought down to Santa’s grotto for kids to tie their Christmas wishes to and since many of their wishes involve wanting to meet Santa that tree has an excellent wish granting success rate! Especially since Santa will not only be in his grotto but out and about around resort on Christmas day, in previous seasons he’s been pulled through resort in a sled pulled by a husky dog team and once I believe he was on a Skidoo so let’s see what they come up with this year.

Elsewhere around resort this week we’ve got Land Rover and Jaguar free test drives, breakfast with the La Plagne Marmot, Christmas mass, cheese tasting sessions in Belle Plagne and Aime 2000 and torchlight descents in every major village, live music up at the Grande Rochette, and a firework fiasco on Christmas day. Christmas cheer at the ready folks, it’s about to get festive!
The snow conditions are much the same as last week, the snowfall we had has come and gone but the predicted rain luckily didn’t do any damage. The temperature so far has been conducive to artificial snow making so although the mountain is still far too green in places, the runs are open all the way down to the Vanoise, La Roche and Montalbert. The snow is hard packed and icy still but considering our last big snowfall was in early November its really not bad, and compared to other lower lying resorts (mentioning no names) we are in good shape.

Sadly though it seems my wish on the wishing tree, for a giant dump of fresh powder in time for Christmas, isn’t looking likely, the forecast is clear of all snow and even clouds for the next 7 days and more sadly the temperature is set to spike up to the pluses and be downright warm. This will make for some very pleasant spring like skiing for this week’s guests but a bit of warmth combined with Christmas week crowds is going to leave us rather short by the end of the week.

So fingers crossed that the clouds roll in and the snow starts falling but if it doesn’t come don’t worry, get out there and enjoy the unseasonable warmth and all the festivities. Get out early in the week and early in the morning to make the most of the snow we have and remember to take a swig from your hipflask every time you see a skier in Santa suit!

Merry Christmas to all, hope you have a great week!