Dawn Breaks

Verbier ’s legendary skiing is part natural brilliance and part hard work

- Tom Otley

At around seven in the morning, while the Swiss resort of Verbier is still in darkness and the surrounding mountains indistinguishable from the night-time sky, the patrouille (ski patrollers) begin their day’s work. Overnight, in preparation, as skiers fill the après-ski bars then move on to restaurants and nightclubs, the lights of the snow cats can be seen grooming the slopes ready for the next day. That job completed, now it is time to make those same pistes safe before the day’s skiing can begin.

To see what is involved, I met up with a member of the patrouille – Victoria Jamieson. One of 28 people patrolling the Verbier Four Vallées area (and one of only two women), her working day starts at 7am and ends at nearly 6pm. In between, it involves everything from making sure the pistes are safe by checking they are correctly marked and coming to the aid of injured skiers to, depending on snow conditions, setting off controlled avalanches with bombs.

To get up there, we took the Médran gondola from Verbier (1,200 metres) up to Les Ruinettes (2,200 metres), and as the tops of the mountains became clearer against the lightening sky, stopped for a minute to watch a faint pink edge the horizon as this beautiful part of the world awoke.

From one point of view, the patrouille are the security team ensuring the safety of the resort before it opens, except here there are no intruders to worry about – only nature. As well as 410km of pistes, Verbier has 11 “itineraries”, which are marked but ungroomed, and endless off-piste opportunities.