Savoie. In these ski resorts, winter is already in the making.

Between major ski lift construction projects and maintenance and upkeep work, the countdown has begun at the Société des Trois-Vallées (Courchevel and Méribel-Mottaret), as it has at all other resorts. The imperative is to be ready in six months for the winter season.

At an altitude of 2,300 meters, the Côte Brune chairlift, linking Méribel-Mottaret, Val Thorens and Les Menuires, is giving way to a new cable car, which will transport 2,600 people per hour, starting next winter. Photo Le DL /Grégory Yetchmeniza — At an altitude of 2,300 meters, the Côte Brune chairlift, linking Méribel-Mottaret, Val Thorens and Les Menuires, is giving way to a new gondola, which will transport 2,600 people per hour, starting next winter. Photo Le DL /Grégory Yetchmeniza

"Winter's success is built in the summer." Sébastien Lazzaroni, director of the Méribel-Mottaret ski area for the Société des Trois-Vallées (S3V), has a way with words to sum up the intense activity that reigns on and around the slopes and lifts. "Summer is a countdown, anticipation, to be ready at the beginning of December." And he's not just thinking about the massive construction sites for the Chenus cable cars in Courchevel and Côte Brune in Mottaret (€46 million investment) and the three-year modernization of the snowmaking network on the Pas du Lac (€8 million excluding VAT).

Behind these major projects, so visible, six months before the start of the...

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