After a five year battle the Swiss side fo the Portes du Soleil have signed a deal with ecologists. The ski area intends to invest CHF 100 million to 2024. The deal will see pistes removed, an upgrade of ski lifts, more snow making and protection for wetlands.

A first version of the accord was rejected in 2007 and again in 2008 by residents of the Val-d’Illiez. They didn’t want the lift company TéléMorgins SA to develop the north side of the Pointe-de-l’Au in favour of Champoussin.

According to Marie-Thérèse Sangra, secretary of WWF Valais it is an exemplary deal which guarantees peace between the various actors for the next 15 years. The deal still has to pass a public inquiry and be ratified by the communities of Monthey, Troistorrents, Val-d’Illiez and Champéry.

Great news! Especially now that i’ve moved away from geneva (and therefore the haute-savoie) and closer to the valais. Looking forward to rediscovering this area of the alps!

The next step is to stop the waste created by the Portes-du-Soleil refusal to take back the magnetic cards (and pay back the “deposit"). It is the only resort I know with such a policy. If you are like me, you ski 10 to 15 different resorts in a season but still want to take advantage of a hands free lift ticket, then keeping your magnetic card for the off-chance you might come back soon is not an option.

Furthermore, those one time visiting vacationers are all buying magnetic cards which will almost all end up in the bin. Why not re-use them? Like all other resorts I know? (Chamonix, Verbier, Zermatt, Contamines, etc… all take them back) Has anyone else been bothered by this P-d-S policy?

Hard to see how they can call it a deposit if they won’t give it back, it is just a fixed part of the price.

I’m glad the ecologists have a voice.

Some people call the environMENTALists but I think what is mental is to have tens of thousands of people crawling all over the mountains, most of whom are more interested in vin chaud than skiing anyway.

I have my grandma’s books on skiing including photos of resorts fifty years ago before ski lifts - bring back skins and keep all those fat, unfit bankers off our hills.  Oh whoops, was that a tad politically incorrect!!

Shelley

I thought they’d given up calling it a deposit, I may be wrong though. These “magnetic” cards are generally “RFID” tags, these things can be read by any RFID reader. They normally contain nothing more than a fairly long combination of numbers and letters. Would it not be great if one RFID tag could be used in all resorts! That’ll never happen. As it happens RFID tags can cost as little a 10c each, this was evident in Verbier where it seems that every ticket is sold with a tag embedded and with no obvious extra cost.

Agreed, a single card for all resorts would be great. At this point you could even have the chips build into jackets, gloves, ski poles (anything really...). Swatch are the only ones I know that offer a solution with their snowpass watches. Just load your ticket onto your watch at the lift sales point.