a man in a climbing harness laying tiles on a ski jump

diggers and workmen working on the ski jump

A large pile of rocks sits on the side of a hill

earth works and diggers at the Grepon ski jump in Chamonix

A construction site in the middle of a forest

A pile of gravel sits in the middle of a grassy hillside

Improvements Being Made to Chamonix's Grepon Ski Jump

3 new jumps, lamination, artificial snow reservoirs, lighting & timing being installed

featured in News & reviews Author Ellie Mahoney, Chamonix Editor Updated 24 October 2014

You might have noticed some building work has begun at the rather run down-looking ski jump in between the Carrefour supermarket and the Grepon car park on the way into Chamonix centre.

Diggers have been working, trees have been felled.. what's going on I hear you ask? We spoke with Laurent Claudel, the Director of Sports for the Chamonix Valley, to find out..

Laurent tells us the work is aimed at renovating the the whole space; jumps and landing zones included. The work will carry on over the summer until September, and is going to involve re-modelling the hill, re-profiling the landing area, adding reservoirs for articifcial snow systems and electricity for timing and lighting.

Ski jumping will resume there again this winter, with three new jumps; one of 15m, one 30m and a 55 metre jump. In spring 2015 the 55m jump with be laminated or platicised to make it a facility that can be used all year round. Laurent says that more ski jumping takes place in summer than winter - who'd have thought..

Three ski-jump (or combined) athletes that live in the Chamonix Valley are Vincent Descombe-Sevoie (a member of the top French ski jump team and French record holder for flight on skis), François Braud (a member of the French Nordic combined team who came 4th in the Vancouver Olympics & 3rd in the World Cup in Oslo) and Geoffrey Lafarge (a member of the Junior French Nordic combined team).

So after the works are completed you don't have to travel far to come and watch them in competition!

Thanks to Kate Fitzpatrick for the photo and Laurent Claudel for the update.