Get out the waterskis!
Here comes the sun! Show melt season is here
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – There is plenty of snow but you’ll have to be an earlybird this weekend to avoid skiing in soupy stuff. Temperatures are rapidly climbing, with highs Friday of 16C in Geneva, 17 in Lausanne, 19! in Sion and 11C even in Zermatt, this is spring ski season.
Weather forecast
MeteoSwiss is promising us more of the same Saturday, but temperatures will drop Sunday to highs of 10-11C around Lake Geneva and 3C in Zermatt. Expect the snowline to fall to 800 m Monday, with some snow forecast.
Check out Jared Bloch’s videos from his snowshoe trek up the Salève next to Geneva last weekend on his “Wheels Enthusiast” blog.
Jura report
by Shirley Curran
Spring is almost here in the Jura mountains and this week has seen temperatures shoot up so that our sun-facing slopes become rather slushy after about 11:00. If you want to enjoy the thick layers of snow that still cover our pistes despite the almost drought conditions of the month of February, you do well to get onto the snow early in the day or to stick to the north-facing slopes. We have the promise of yet more sunshine for the next few days, and everything is operating until March 12th from when the Crozet side of the Lelex/Crozet resort will only operate on Wednesdays and at weekends.
Local weekend highlights
If you’ve just returned to the Lake Geneva region from school ski holidays in the Alps you might want to stay closer to home. Check out our events page, and consider heading to beautiful Annecy for its Venetian Carnival weekend. GenevaLiving blog carries a complete list of Carnival activities.
Enjoy the sunshine!
Read the complete 2012 list of carnivals (Carnival, Carnevale, Carnaval, Karneval or Fasnacht). Still plenty of carnivals: From Basel to Swiss Romande and neighboring France.
Location: Switzerland
Link out: http://genevalunch.com/geneva-living/2012/02/12…
Start date: 28 Feb 2012
End date: 13 Mar 2012
Avalanche danger growing, says federal office
Dutch prince “stable” but not out of danger after Austrian avalanche
Very steep slope above Ardon, canton Valais
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The weekend promises every skier’s dream: fresh powder on top of an excellent base throughout the Alps and Jura, warmer weather and mostly sunny skies.
There is a down side: the risk of avalanches is growing, thanks to the combination of warmer weather and significant layers of fresh snow.
Prince Johan Friso, 43, the second son of Dutch Queen Beatrix, is in stable condition in an Innsbruck hospital after being buried under an avalanche for 15 minutes.
He was skiing off-piste with three other people when the avalanche, reportedly 30 metres wide and 40m long, occurred.
He was wearing an avalanche beeper, which allowed rescuers to reach him quickly and he was resuscitated at the scene, but doctors say he is not yet out of danger.
Several members of the Dutch royal family were on holiday together, including the queen, reports the BBC.
Weather forecast, snow conditions
Frosted Jura (photo, Shirley Curran)
Saturday: sunshine and highs of 6-8C, with the Valais Alps the warmest area until you get to Ticino, says MeteoSwiss. Rain or snow in some areas on Sunday, but less likely in Valais. Get in your day on the slopes Saturday.
More snow appeared during the week than was forecast, so there’s a good fresh layer in most resorts. Alpine areas north of the Rhone had 10-25cm Wednesday and early Thursday, with peaks in the centre and some parts of the Vaud Alps getting 25-50cm.
The avalanche risk level is 3 for Saturday, but note that WSL, the Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research, is providing a longer than usual bulletin for this week. Three skiers were caught by an avalanche in Obwald Friday.
The WSL notes that “Snowdrift accumulations can be easily triggered in some places and should be circumvented. Experience in assessing avalanche hazards is essential. In all regions of this danger level, particularly on steep, south facing slopes, the avalanche hazards are subject to a daytime cycle. The likelihood of avalanches being triggered is somewhat lesser in early morning, but subsequently escalates in line with the daytime warming cycle.”
More snow expected Sunday in some areas means the avalanche situation will “remain tense” according to WSL. Avalanche-prone areas are above 2,000 metres in western parts of the Alps, but they are found “on steep slopes in all aspects above approximately 1,600m; in the western part of the northern flank of the Alps the danger zones are above approximately 1800 m.
Alpine resort highlights
Crans-Montana Next weekend is the FIS Men’s World Cup downhill races, with super G and giant slalom, so plan ahead to watch them tear down the National run.
Gstaad Curling tournament: the Curling Schweizer Meisterschaften from 17-25 February, your golden opportunity to see top Swiss teams. Also consider next weekend’s snow games, with a lot of family activities.
Verbier Take along a costume – it’s carnival time! You’ll find this true throughout the Alps, starting Friday 17 February, but Verbier is taking it seriously with a procession followed by a ball Saturday night.
Jura resorts
by Shirley Curran
Conditions are superb in the resorts in the Jura mountains with this week’s falls of snow added to what was already an exceptional cover and the cold weather holding up. However, it is no longer bitterly cold up there, just very pleasant with all the lifts running and queuing very rare. Of course, you have a choice of Jouvencelles/La Dôle (the Franco-Suisse resort), Les Rousses, St Cergue and all the Monts-Jura resorts. Even charming little Menthières is boasting exceptional snow conditions.
And don’t forget about ice-skating!
For those who want something beside skiing, or who are staying on the plain, here’s a little help if you want to talk intelligently about ice-skating, from EPFL in Lausanne: Ice skates glide across the ice because … check out the quiz and its informative answer page.
La Loge (photo, Shirley Curran)
LONDON – The two-day, Caribbean-flavoured extravaganza known as the Notting Hill’s Carnival is off to a great start.
The carnival which draws up to a million revellers out onto the west London streets are “so-far, so-good.”
Yesterday 28 August dancers in exotic costumes performed on floats as powerful sound systems pumped out music; more than 50 people were arrested in the first day of the festival.
The festival hails itself as “London’s most vibrant celebration of diversity, colour and sound.”
Links to: Notting Hill Carnival website, Time Out London
From Altdorf to Yverdon-les-bains passing through Bellinzona we have compiled a list of carnivals around Switzerland.
Location: Switzerland
Link out: http://genevalunch.com/geneva-living/2011/02/17…
Start date: 25 Feb 2011
End date: 13 Apr 2011
Brazilian police say 17 people died electrocuted when a power line fell on a tightly packed crowd dancing behind a large sound truck during a pre-carnival parade.
The accident occurred in the town of Bandeiro do Sul in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais.
Earlier this month a young woman fell to her death while rehearsing on a musical float in Rio de Janeiro.
The Rio de Janeiro carnival begins on 6 March.
Links to: Associated Press, AFP
Les Diablerets, canton Vaud
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Blazing blue skies beckon, and they promise to hold for the weekend. Ski resorts are offering plenty of activities in the run-up to the school ski holidays that are staggered by canton in Switzerland, starting in two weeks.
A word of caution: accidents up
The number of accidents on slopes in France and Switzerland has been unusually high in the past two weeks, in part due to hard snow because of limited snowfalls and thaws followed by freezing.
Col des Mosses, canton Vaud
Some schools have cancelled ski days, not for lack of snow, but as a precaution because of the potential danger, especially for older students who ski on their own.
Use extra caution and be prepared for icy patches.
Avalanches: MySwitzerland’s avalanche warning page offers a useful map and at the moment the danger level is low to moderate throughout the country. If you’re going off-trail, the Swiss national avalanche centre offers more detail.
Weather forecast
Les Diablerets, canton Vaud
Fog on the plain and sunny and mild in the mountains for the weekend: lows of -1C starting Saturday, with highs of 10C, so if you’re planning to ski, get out early in the day before the snow turns soft.
MeteoSwiss, the national weather service, is forecasting falling temperatures, but still relatively mild with highs of 4C, starting next Tuesday 8 February.
Ski resorts: snow reports and what’s on
Jura report, by Shirley Curran
All week we have been skiing on the excellent pistes that have been maintained with artificial snow at Crozet and Lelex in the Jura mountains. There is good skiing right down to 900 metres over at Lelex. The surfaces are hard but the blue, green and red pistes are in fine condition and the sun shines all day up above the layer of stratus that shrouds Geneva.
You can see for yourself at www.monts-jura.com
Swiss Alps
Les Diablerets, canton Vaud
The new snow report won’t make skiers happy: less than 1cm of fresh snow in the past week, for the entire country. Ski conditions are nevertheless good, with enough snow to keep the runs covered and weather cold enough until now to keep it in decent shape.
Alternative weekend winter events
White Turf horse racing on ice
One of the most thrilling winter sports events in Switzerland is the White Turf races in St Moritz, so if you’re heading that way, don’t miss this, Sunday 6 February.
Horses thunder around the frozen lake in the centre of town in this annual race that has been taking place since 1907. For an idea of what to expect, check out last year’s beautiful photos.
Carnival!
The Carneval season has begun, but keep in mind that dates vary from canton to canton and from one town to the next. A good source for information and dates is the Swiss tourism office site, MySwitzerland.
This weekend there are celebrations in Estavayer-le-lac in canton Fribourg, Saturday and a marching band (fanfare) festival in Saas Grund in canton Valais to kick off Carnival, Friday night and Saturday: a good opportunity to discover the excellent skiing in and around Saas Fee.
Title: Carnival in Avanches
Location: Avanches
Link out: Click here
Description: «Guggenmusik», costumes, and a full parade are expected to awaken the former Roman empire city of Avenches.
Start Date: 2010-03-19
End Date: 2010-03-21
Title: Fanfare (food, drinks and party)
Location: St-Livres
Link out: Click here
Description: Friday 12 March in Lavigny – cocktail, dinner and music from 19h (tickets available)
Saturday 13 March in Lavigny – sold out
Sunday 14 March in St-Livres – brunch 10h-14h (tickets available)
For information: +41 21 809 5756
Start Date: 2010-03-12
End Date: 2010-03-13
Title: Carnival in Orbe
Location: Orbe, Vaud
Link out: Click here
Description: A weekend filled with costumes and fun, fun, fun.
Start Date: 2010-03-12
End Date: 2010-03-14
Federer and UBS’s Ospel were probably not playing the same tune
Basel: peaceful on Sunday, before Fasnacht begins
Basel's Fasnacht: leave your car at home!
Update 25 February 09:30 (video clip) Basel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The people of Basel will have sore feet by the early hours of Thursday 25 February, as Fasnacht moves into its final drumbeats after three days of incessant marching and parade-watching.
If you’ve read Swiss newspapers you could be forgiven for thinking that the guests of honour were Libyan leader Muammar Qadaffi and former Swiss President Hans-Rudolf Merz. They were indeed present, but only in effigy, dozens and dozens of versions of each of them. Uncle Sam, who looked like an IRS (US tax authority) employee saying “I want YOU!” also showed up several times during the parades and in city bars.
More intriguing, however, were the rumours flying thick that one of the pipers behind a mask was Marcel Ospel, former boss of banking giant UBS and a citizen of Basel. “He never gave back his bonus!” the word went round. But should the piper pay the piper? Ospel apparently thought not.
Getting Qadaffi and Merz in place for the parade, Basel Fasnacht
Basel's streets fill with piccolo players practising on Sunday, before Fasncht begins
If he was behind a mask he was one of thousands, and there was no danger of it being pulled off in this festival with no written rules, but an unspoken list of do’s and don’ts. Masks stay on.
Another giant question mark hanging over the crowd was the possible presence Roger Federer. The tennis star had said that he would not be participating in the Dubai tournament because of a lung infection, that he would be taking a little time off. Where better to do that than in hometown Basel during its famous Fasnacht, the city whispered loudly.
For loud it is in Basel during Fasnacht, surely one of Europe’s most spectacular shows and all the more endearing to visitors because it is not put on for tourists.
The parade route is 7km long, but the city’s population joins in so enthusiastically that there are 14km of people. “It poses a few organizational problems,” says Fasnacht Comite President Felix Rudolf von Rohr, a former politician, ruefully.
The way money really works in Basel
Carneval march in Miege, canton Valais, February 2009
Lucern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Carnaval, a festive time before the sombre period of Lent, called Fasnacht in most Swiss German-speaking areas, kicked off early Thursday morning in Lucern and Soleure, with marches and music in the streets. Swiss cantons and villages celebrate their carnivals at different times around the start of Lent, the period leading up to Easter. The Catholic cantons generally start earlier and end before Lent, on Ash Wednesday, 17 February this year.
Canton Valais’s Carnaval begins tomorrow, Friday 12 February. Festivities continue until 17 February, although some of the German-speaking areas celebrated early.
The most famous of the Protestant cantons’ carnivals are in Basel, 21-23 February and Bern, 18-20. Bern’s fete is relatively young, started only in 1982, but it’s a colourful event.
Links to: Valais dates, Basel Fasnacht (Ger) and city tourism office in English, Bern Fasnacht (Ger)
Title: Lucerne festival
Location: Lucerne
Link out: Click here
Description: This Swiss mardi-gras festival has plenty of brass and masks to keep you warm this winter.
Start Date: 2010-02-11
End Date: 2010-02-16
Title: Carnival in Bern
Location: Bern
Link out: Click here
Description: This is the third largest pre-holy week festival in Switzerland.
Start Date: 2010-02-18
End Date: 2010-02-20
The Swiss postal service, La Poste, bissued the Basel Carnival commemorative stamp 5 January 2009. You can order them online, in English. Great for collectors, or even as easy gifts for non-philatelists: these are particularly charming stamps. Background story on GenevaLunch
Basel Carnival collector's postage stamps
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The Swiss postal service will start selling its newest commemorative stamps, for the famed Basel Carnival (Fasnacht), 5 January to collectors and 12 January in post offices. The one-franc (regular letter price) stamps may be used starting 12 January.
The three stamps commemorate the centennary of the organizing committee that is at the heart of the three-day pre-Lenten festival, but La Poste points out that Basel’s Carnival itself dates back to the 14th century. The stamps show typical costumes and the heart of the party, the city’s Spalentor, town hall and the cathedral. Basel artist Andreas Daniel Vetsch created them.
The festival in 2010 takes place from 22-24 February.
Links to other sites: Basel Carnival (Ger), Basel tourism office, Swiss post office philately page (Ed. note: the new stamps are not yet listed on the English pages)
Title: Fetes de Geneve
Location: Geneva
Link out: Click here
Description: The traditional Geneva Festival kicks off 30 July but the “pre-fetes” or pre-fest concerts and activities start on the 16th. Food, music, carnival rides and more on the shore of Lake Geneva. The host of honor this year is the Sultanate of Oman.
Start Date: 16 Jul 2009
End Date: 09 Aug 2009
Valais, Switzerland (GenevaLunch and TSR, Fre) – The strange wooden bells, tubas, trombones and off-key music that are part of Swiss Carneval could be heard starting Thursday 19 February in several corners of Valais.
This is one of Switzerland’s Catholic cantons that celebrates Carneval during the four to five days leading up to Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday, and the start of Lent Wednesday 25 February.
Click on images to view larger
Bern, Switzerland (Le Temps, Fre) – Carnival (Mardi Gras) is getting underway and toy arms, especially guns and knives, are part of the traditional costumes fun, but this may be ending, thanks to a new Swiss law that requires registration of dangerous arms (Swiss Federal Police and Justice brochure, Fre).
Lugano, Switzerland (swissinfo) – Two of the the three young men who murdered 22-year-old student Damiano Tamagni, without provocation, during the Mardi Gras (Carnival) festivities in Locarno in February 2008 have been sentenced to 10 years in prison.
