Grand Massif et Les Trois Vallées
Winter sports central in the high peaks of the southeast
Another side of France is its massive skiing industry, which offers some of the world’s best slope-swooshing. A plethora of resorts tempt the winter tourist, although generally not for the budget-conscious, but you can certainly go further up the scale if you head into Switzerland. The French resorts cater to huge numbers of skiers and snowboarders, are generally easily reached from elsewhere in Europe, and often sold as package deals with punters bussed in from airports at Geneva, Lyon and Grenoble.
My first skiing holiday was to Les Deux Alpes over new year 1995, at which point I’d only had around ten days’ skiing experience in Scotland, so it was a baptism of fire (or ice) with giant uplift systems, huge crowds and temperatures down to minus 23 Celsius. I did improve a good deal during the week, however, and was happy to return to the French Alps in 2010 and 2019, following occasional skiing in Scotland, Norway, Alaska and Switzerland’s Zermatt. And, I suppose, Dubai.
The Grand Massif as skied in 2019. One of France‘s interconnected areas of several valleys, centred around Flaine, resorts such as these offer extensive value and variety of terrain for all abilities.
We opted to stay at Hotel le Morillon in the village of Morillon, not especially high elevation at only around 800 metres, but easily reached in about an hour from Geneva Airport. And only a couple of hundred metres from the gondola access to the whole ski area.
Wooden chalet-style interior at Hotel le Morillon.
Our hotel even had a small swimming pool, jacuzzi and steam room – perfect for unwinding after a tough day on the slopes. Part of the pool was outside, and I can attest that rolling around on snow that fell several days ago, is not comfortable.
The resort of Flaine resembles a slightly forbidding Soviet town, but was built largely at the same time and designed to fit with the existing lie of the land as much as possible. It sits at around 1,600 metres elevation, around a mile high.
Just above the tree line and looking towards the higher peaks, and larger chalet/hotel accommodations.
Fairly broad slopes cut through the forests, similar to Alaska skiing but not at all like Scotland!
View from the summit of the Grand Massif, facing away from the crowds. The highest skiable run goes up to 2,561 metres, nearly twice as high as Britain’s highest peak.
A visit to the slopes can’t pass by without a visit to the bar – a cool, refreshing lager and a warm, nutritious glühwein being the order of today.
With all the snow the Alps get, alas there are even days here where everything is shut, although frustratingly on this particular day it was due to high winds.
There was nothing for it but to wander along from Morillon to the next village, Samoëns. It took a lot longer than we anticipated, being fairly deep snow along most of the route.
View from our hotel window in Morillon, trees frozen up with moisture overnight.
The snow started properly coming down.
That’s more like it – more skiing as soon as the mountain opens up again!
Onward and backward to 2010 with a week spent in the resort of Val Thorens, the highest resort village in France at 2,300 metres and part of Les Trois Vallées, the largest continuous ski area on earth.
View of one of the ski-bowl areas at Val Thorens. Despite our accommodation being not much larger than a shoebox, it was ski-in, ski-out which once you’ve experienced dragging skis for hundreds of metres to get to the lifts, is an absolute luxury.
The next valley along from Val Thorens is Méribel, with its own resort town. It’s a bit of a commute to get over here from Val Thorens, but not as much as the slog over to Courcheval, in the third of The Three Valleys. You have to make sure you time it right to get back, or you’ll miss the last chair and get stranded in the wrong village, as I painfully (and expensively) learned.
Chairlift at the summit of The Three Valleys, two miles or over 3200 metres in altitude. While Val Thorens is the highest skiing village in Europe, other resorts have skiable pistes extending even further up, such as at Zermatt.
Spectacular view of the beautiful French Alps, as seen from the summit of Les Trois Vallées high above the clouds. The last time I was up this high was at the top of Mount Fuji.
Created 2014 | Updated 2023
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