The ‘Ghost Station’ – Vauplane 1600, Soleilhas – [FIRST SNOW, Nov ’24]

The ‘Ghost Station’ – Vauplane 1600, Soleilhas – [FIRST SNOW, Nov ’24]

[Music] [Music] it’s mid November and like clockwork the snow has started to fall right throughout France we’ve had an incredible week all the stations are reporting new snowfall so I’m out in about making videos um and just getting excited about the new season coming up so I’m visiting a small French commune called Sol house this trip is bit of sweet for me but I thought it’s important for me to actually visit this [Music] area so the ski area is about 8 km outside the village up the mountain where you reach the main Plateau it’s called St Dev VLAN [Music] [Applause] so I’m here at the abandoned ski station VLAN I’m not going to lie it’s quite depressing to be a more than what I thought it would I told you that this was a a Bittersweet um Excursion [Music] so I emailed the local council at soas who administer this area and they informed me via email that unfortunately the ski station was abandoned um was completely shut down in 2016 the actual ski lifts are still here what typically happens is once an area is deemed no longer in use they won’t dism manle the ski LIF for a few years sometimes that’s because of costs or sometimes that’s to allow some time for a new buyer to come in and actually um take on the Venture and refurbish the lift so they won’t dismantle them yet but as of now in 2024 there’s no dismantling scheduled for the actual lift here but just looking at them they are in a really bad State um it looks like they’ve been tied off and also the clubhouse [Music] so VLAN only offered a total of 6 kilm of runs using the three drag lifts you can see behind me one beginner run four intermediate one Advanced and one difficult run in total [Music] so even a place like this has something significant in common with all the major ski stations and that is that they all started the same way they started by somebody who was passionate about skiing identifying an area realizing that it had potential to be a ski area and then actually going through the motion of commissioning a ski lift of some sort and then the local community would get in [Music] [Music] [Laughter] evolved you can literally see where the water flows down from the mountain and into the actual Gorge down [Music] there so the key station is almost perfectly aligned with North and South the South slope which is north facing had all the ski runs and the northern side of the ski area didn’t have any I’m actually going to climb the northern slope of the ski area today because I believe it is slightly higher elevation and also the view from there should be quite spectacular so let’s go check it out so in the distance if you look almost straight East you can just about make out the tips of the Southern elves coming into nice and I’m happy to report they’re all covered in snow so that’s great it’s a Pity we’ve missed it here at a 1,800 M altitude but the snow is definitely sticking in the southern elves the view from the top should be quite something oh my word it’s steep though [Music] so I read recently that at the last audit there was more than 8.5 million active skiers documented in France which at the time made it nearly 133% of the [Music] population so throughout the summer I’ve been researching all the French ski stations it absolutely blows my mind that there are more than 200 skiable areas just in France alone that’s across various mountain ranges in France what’s even more shocking to me is that since the 1950s and 60s there’s more than 200 stations that have actually closed down um so I’m very curious about the origins of these places what caused some of the stations to close down and I’ll be exploring that here on my channel so unfortunately the big white elephant in the room for places like this is indeed climate change um since the 1950s where we’ve had solid record keeping the average temperature in the mountains has been raising by 25 to 50% faster than the mean average at Sea altitude so the mountains are much more susceptible to climate change no snow yet on VLAN 1800 but lots of ice you can see the sun reflecting off it at the moment it’s just starting to melt I’m 100% sure they’re going to get some snow in the season holy moly look at this [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] so the sun is just about to go I’ll be leaving soon it’s been a fantastic day at VLAN um whenever I visit a new ski area I like to commemorate it by buying like a small token or souvenir I normally go for ski stickers but they often are defined so for this uh YouTube channel I’ve decided to actually start making stickers and um I’ve got a great partner that can actually um print them and ship them to you at cost price so if you’re interested check out the link this is uh my sticker for VLAN VLAN 1600 established in 1975 unfortunately the end was 2016 so I found the most perfect place to put the sticker If you ever visit please check if it’s still here thank you for watching my videos stay cool see you guys later bye [Music]

The new winter season is here, but before the ski fun start I want to explore an abandoned ski area in Alpes-de-Haute-Provence.

Now, unfortunately know as a ‘Ghost Station’, Vauplane 1600 was founded in 1975 just outside the French commune Soleilhas. So what happened to this incredible place? And does it give a preview for other ski stations similar to this? I explore the base valley as well as the highest point on Crète de Saint Bernade with its insane view.

Cheers, Johnny

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