I recently had the pleasure of skiing with Alan in the three valleys France or le trois vallés.
Three main resorts make up the area Courchevel 1850, Val Thorens and Meribel.
There are other places to stay but the key is just to be close inside the area consisting of these 3 valleys as it has an extensive network of lifts and a good variety of runs. You can do all three in a day easily. The lift pass for a week is more for all the valleys but is worth it, if you were a beginner you might not get the value from it however I would still recommend you get it if money isnt tight. It also looks ideal if you are wanting to learn to ski having some really forgiving easy runs.
We stayed in chalet Ecrasé in the largest of the resorts Courcheval 1850 which sits west of the central Merribal valley and then east of Meribel is val Torens and les Menuires.
I was surprised that our Chalet booked through http://www.igluski.com/ and run by http://www.supertravel.co.uk/SkiDefault.asp was empty apart from us. This was good in that we had more space but not so good because we would have less opportunity to socialise with other skiers, something I usually like. Although according to Roeena at Igluski, just before booking it was full. I'm sure this was so we would book quickly; not great Igluski!
We tried to also book ski hire through http://www.worldski.com/, but they didn't answer emails expediently and efficiently enough before we left and Alan didn't have any luck on the telephone either. We wanted to be exact about where we would pick up the skis. Unfortunately they got back to us too late and we were already there. When they did get back to us they didn't give us any really useful information, just mentioned that it would have been in the email at booking time. Not ideal, I love to get emails telling me what I at least asked for and more besides. Have you tried this method of ski hire? as it would have saved us about 50 quid, whereas out there it cost us £ 137 for boots and skis as the top package.
So it could have been better pre arrival, but Super Travel really were good from the moment we landed. Alan’s thoughts were that this was better than vice versa, and indeed it was, only Igluski and World Ski were not very informative.
We never got to try Astraeus, who were supposed to provide the fights as a Frenchman had crashed a set of ladders into the leading edge of our plane the night before so Monarch stepped up to our rescue. Interestingly though the pilot had to land at Grenoble as he wasn't skilled enough to land at Chamberry! It doesn't get more exciting than that at Gatwick. So we transferred from Grenoble to Courchevel 1850 no problem. A certain father and son however had their baggage messed up and this was not the first time! Last year they had the same problem! Super Travel gave them a discount to cover what they had needed to buy in the resort the previous year, and here they were again in the same position. It was a Sunday and their luggage arrived Friday. They were marvellous sports I have to say after the mess the airlines or should I say baggage companies left them in. How did you get on guys, did you get refunded ok ?
We were impressed by the sagging trees full of snow which had completely thawed out by the time we were on our way back, it would seem that we had the best of luck with the weather conditions. It also snowed in the evenings and except for one day of flat light early on in the week we enjoyed some glorious days of sun on wide open slopes.
It took me some time to get my kit sorted out, but Super Travel used a 3rd party hire company who provided home delivery and this was worth the extra. I certainly didn't like my original skis which I thought lacked spring, I then got a new pair of Rossignol bandits given to me which I was very much impressed by. Also it took 2 days to realise that my boots were too tight and that it wasn't me being a wuss, the big toe on my right foot was black!
The route home was unnecessarily long and amounted to waiting around. Why do tour companies dump you at the airport with too much (way too much) time to spare. I'm going to be cynical here and suggest that 400 people stuck for 2 hours spend quite a bit of money at the restaurant.
The skiing on the whole for the three valleys was excellent. I especially liked the Meribel - Menuires mountain runs on the Menuires side but found it difficult to connect and get up across to Val Thorens, still I didn't need to. Runs such as Pramint and Les Allemands were fantastic, fast and wide. There really is no shortage of off piste options. On the way up to Chanrossa (“in Korshe”) on the left hand side of the lift is a most impressive part of Glacier for off piste and I take no responsibility for you taking up this tip. We skied solitarily and together, sometimes by choice and sometimes by losing each other at a turn. I fell often and that was due to me always picking the hardest way through the mogul or having to dodge someone and running off piste then stupidly trying to turn which you can’t do in a foot of snow! I did manage the fastest run of the week on the second morning at 57.9 mph and according to my GPS forerunner would have been even better had I managed to bleed off all that speed successfully and gracefully without losing a ski and having no choice but to accept the slow motion (to me) wipe out.
It is rumoured that Courchevel is being bought up by the Russian Oligarchy and I wish I could say that there was no evidence of that. At least it doesn't detract from the skiing and seemingly only affects the nightlife. On a couple of occasions one bar in particular was closed for members only and the body guards weren’t exactly inconspicuous. The regular Russian tourism must be targeting Corchevel as there was a plane at Grenoble as we arrived and waited for transfer and the soft bling was in evidence on the slopes.
My favourite pastime of the week was chasing ski bunnies on the slopes sometimes they are just too fast to catch soft bling or not.
