Category: Skiing Snowboard Paintings

This ski season I took the first visit for many years returning to the Portes Du Soleil ski area. I had forgotten how beautiful this ski are is and the huge variety of tree line skiing.

I normally gravitate towards resorts with higher peaks and glaciers, so much so that I had forgotten about the pleasures of this extensive ski area with such a wonderful variety of terrain and so many great restaurants tucked away in wonderful little valleys.

Skiing Prints from Portes Du Soleil, Les Gets, Morzine and Avoriaz http://pete-caswell.pixels.com/collections/morzine+avoriaz+les+gets

My favourite resort in this ski area was probably Morzine for its great character and variety of restaurants in such a beautiful valley. I actually stayed up in Avoriaz, as I do insist where possible in placing my feet straight onto the piste as soon as I step outside the hotel door. Its a luxury which if it is there I must have it. No buses, no cars for me, if I can just ski straight from the door then I am in heaven.

I developed a bit of a soft spot during my stay for my favourite restaurant which was O’Padcha just on the Swiss French border. Being a bit tight with my lunch budget, I normally steer clear of Switzerland when there are cheaper French alternatives, but I loved this place. Tea in a tea pot (Message to the French, this is how you do it learn here) no more half filled cups of luke warm water barely covering the tea bag. Excellent food and service, smiling happy and fun staff, could it get any better. Then there is the view and located right next to my favourite piste.

I love a bit of a challenge and this ski area seemed a bit lacking so this lovely ungroomed slope The Swiss Wall proved a lot of fun and then the wonderful and stunning Les Crosets Valley lay before you as a reward – perfect. You know what warmed my heart further about this place was also rather silly. My mind mentally inked this restaurant with the Pacha club in Ibiza and reminded me of my favourite Cafe Del Mar music also from Ibiza where I spent a great week the previous year. What a silly mind I have. But then at O’Padcha, when they sparked up the DJ later in the afternoon playing just the sort of music you might get at a cool bar in Ibiza I was made, sun, snow, mountains and sunsets next to the ocean (a frozen one in this case).

Original Ski Paintings from Avoriaz, Morzine, Les Gets https://petecaswell.co.uk/wp2/product-tag/morzine/

All Ski Paintings https://petecaswell.co.uk/wp2/ski-snowboard-paintings/

With Ibiza vibes, super food and still tea left in my tea pot, my day just couldn’t really improve, but this beautiful area gave us its blessing from the Powder Gods and dumped a good 1 meter plus of fresh snow to enjoy some incredible off piste and get early tracks down the Swiss Wall. The only down side was we ended up driving t the resort during the first part of the heavy snow fall which lead to a very interesting drive, made marginally more fun by the snow tires on our Swiss hired car, no more skating on rock solid frozen UK rubber, I had the real deal, but sadly only marginally more grip and much to my fingers frozen displeasure had to park in a nearby drift and chain up on the final leg of the ascent – so disappointing. All that effort of keeping going with marginal grip laid to waste at the final hurdle.

I have put a couple of the early sketches from this ski area up on this blog. They are pretty small so don’t get to carried away. Larger paintings of Morzine, Avoriaz, Les Crostes and Les gets and others are all under way

The Portes Du Soleil Ski area was far bigger than I expected and all the amazing loops possible around the area far exceeded my expectations and with fresh snow they were all in excellent condition. The resorts linked included Morzine, Chatel,Morgins, Champoussin, Les Crosets, Champery-Avoriaz,Chate, Les Gets.