Val d’Isère News & Updates

The pair of adult Lammergeyer who nest every year in the cliffs above La Daille have produced another chick this year, their eleventh since they first succeeded in 2002. While the chicks are young, the via ferrata on that side of the gorges is closed, and paragliders are asked not to fly in the area. The photograph above isn’t the chick: it’s one of the parents. Eggs are laid in mid-January and hatch in mid-March, and the young vultures start their first timid flights in August.

The annual transhumance has happened later than usual this year, because the snow took longer to melt. The 80 cows of one of Val d’Isère’s two dairy farms came up last week to the high pastures, where they’re being milked twice a day in mobile milking parlours. Because of their diet of wild flowers, the milk is considered to make wonderful cheese.

Telegraph travel journalist Clare Mann came to Val d’Isère last year to learn to ski off-piste. After trying four different ski schools, Clare awarded the good-value mainstream schools Oxygène and ESF 8/10, and the more expensive HAT and Progression both 10/10 (although the newspaper editor changed Progression’s full marks to an 8/10 – inexplicably). She stayed with YSE in Chalet des Neiges and describes how everything runs like clockwork.

Clare’s article was in the Sunday Telegraph on 17 February 2013.