Courchevel Snow Report: 21st February 2012

This being the start of the busiest part of the half-term holidays, I fully expected it to be hard work. Got on the early bubble out of Le Praz (no queue), then onto Plantrey (on the first chair) then Biollay & Suisse to the top at 9:32. Take a look at the photo of the crowds I had to put up with at the top of Saulire. Now that is why you should make an effort to get on the first lifts!

Combe Pylones was the Piste du Jour and I was the first to put tracks on it. This is a steepish black run between Combe Saulire & ‘Piste M’. It stays in the shade so the snow is always perfect. If you see the electronic board displaying it as PDJ then I really recommend you try it.

We spent the rest of the day dipping in and out of the Meribel Valley at will, and skiing wherever looked nice with very little plan in mind. Lunch was at the Rond Point for my favourite Bacon & Egg Rosti and that was probably the busiest place I saw all day with endless numbers of people being turned away because they hadn’t booked a table. The black run on the other side of the valley, called Face (Ladies Olympic run) looked appealing through the bottom of a wine glass so after lunch we took the Olympic Express up and skied that. It was OK but a bit lumpy.

Today was very different although the weather was just as amazing as the previous day. I’ve got a friend staying with me at the moment who is an excellent skier and who knows Courchevel very well but really wants to ski to all of the corners of the 3 Valleys while he’s here. Buoyed by the surprising lack of busy lifts on Monday we took off for Val Thorens again, via the top of Saulire then Niverole & Aigle into Mottaret and the 3 chair route to VT (Combes, Chatelet & Cote Brune). That’s 7 lifts and 1½ hours from Le Praz and at no point were there ever more than 2 people in the lift queue in front of me. Now for Paris half-term week that is amazing.

Down the short Goitchel black run into the centre of VT then onto the giant Peclet Funitel which trundles for miles, right up to the head of the valley. There’s a short chair up from here to the glacier, which is creatively called Glacier. Then a short but extremely steep black run, which in a further explosion of creativity is also called Glacier, brings you down onto a long series of red runs into VT. The snow up here was superb as you might expect.

Getting overconfident in our ability to avoid queues we went to the bottom end of town intending to ski the long red on the left called Boismint but the queue for this chair and the lift next door called Moutiere were spectacularly enormous. So we skied round the corner to a little hidden chair called Plan de l’eau which was much less busy. Then out of VT and down the Boulevard Cumin towards Les Menuires and up the La Masse area on the left side. The Doron chair then brought us back into Les Menuires centre, and my goodness how busy was that? It was like the traffic at Piccadilly Circus and the Champs Elysee, all going round a Milton Keynes roundabout, on a bad day.

So we left via the Sunny Express and the Becca chairlifts followed by an excellent lunch at the Grand Lac at the base of the Granges chairlift. Plat du jour is €11.50 (Navarin of Lamb today) on a sunny terrace with a fab view. We could see from here that the St Martin 2 chairlift on the horizon was going up full so we didn’t risk getting stuck there and took the Teppes drag from just outside the restaurant to return to the Meribel Valley.

The red runs Lagopede and Coqs are a lovely route back to La Chaudanne and from here it’s easy to get back to Courchevel. We stopped for a late afternoon drink in the sunshine on the terrace of the Courcheneige Hotel at the top of the Bellecote piste. This is a lovely relaxing spot and although it looks as though it should be very expensive, a beer is €2.50 and a hot chocolate or vin chaud is €4.00. Outrageous in most places but very reasonable in Courchevel.

I normally leave Courchevel at the end of the season when the snow is wet and slushy and it’s easy to want to go home. Well the conditions are as good as I can ever remember currently, and guess what, I’m off home on Thursday so this will be my last snow report of the season. If you’re coming out soon I envy you because it simply does not get better than this.

Au revoir et bon ski.