 Poster: A snowHead
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I’m just back from a fortnight in the French Alps with my husband, staying in two places I hadn’t been before. Two friends who were new to skiing joined us for the first week.
We travelled by daytime direct Eurostar. We’ve done this for the last few years now and we think it’s the best way to travel if you live in the south east. The outward journey was a little more trouble than expected because all the trains from St Albans into London were suspended. We booked a taxi, but nearly came to ruin - it turns out the taxi driver used his satnav and simply put in ‘London’ as the destination! Luckily we realised we were going by a strange route and asked what was going on. We were able to direct him to the train station and were there in enough time to check in. The rest of the journey was easy.
Resort: Sainte Foy Tarentaise
Accommodation: Chalet Etoile du Foret, The White Room
Date: 18 - 25 Jan 2014
We were picked up from Bourg St Maurice and were in Ste Foy within about 30 mins. The chalet is lovely. Very comfortable and warm, nice decor, plenty of room. There’s a walk from the chalet to the slopes up some steps that might put some people off, but we weren’t that bothered. Marc and Dani were our hosts for the week and looked after us very well. I consistently failed to finish the daily four-course meals! stevomcd and Iona run the White Room company and provide a great service, which included Stevo taking me out with some other guys from the chalet for transceiver training and coming round to give a talk to us all on avi safety. You don’t get that from a Crystal chalet!
Sainte Foy exceeded all my hopes for a ski resort. I loved it. There are only four lifts, but I swear I was never bored. The piste skiing was great; very quiet and very varied. There was none of that feeling you get from a big resort of being endlessly en route from one place to another. I could happily loop around the same few runs all day long, finding new things each time. Equally, it was great for my beginner friends. Their private lessons from Olivia at Snocool were excellent and affordable. There were wide open pistes for them to build their confidence and their skills. My friend Ant turned out to be disgustingly competent after only a week’s skiing and was mostly following me around between the pistes on the Friday when we had lovely powder.
Away from the pistes, there were opportunities to be as gnarly or as chilled as you’d like. I spent a day with Dimitri from Snocool and in a moment of madness told him I’d like ‘a challenge’ and ‘an adventure’. We hiked up Pierre d’Arbine and skied an amazing route of steeps, rocky outcrops and forest tracks, ending up in the resort three hours later. I’d done a bit of lift served off piste in Meribel and in Tignes, but nothing like this! It was terrifying, but addictive 
Part of the service from the White Room is they’ll take you on a couple of day trips to nearby resorts if you like, so we had a day in Les Arcs. It was nice to have the contrast, but it was noticeably busier. Sadly the visibility was really poor the day we were there so we didn’t see a lot of it. Nice to have the option tho.
Stevo and Iona generously arranged not just to drop off our friends for the Eurostar on the Saturday morning but also to drop Mat and I around to Val d’Isere for our second week. Thanks guys!
Resort: Val d’Isere La Daille
Accommodation: Pierre & Vacances La Daille
Date: 25 Jan - 1 Feb 2014
It was a bit of a shock to the system to leave idyllic Ste Foy for a shoebox apartment in Val d’Isere. I knew what to expect, but it was still jarring. It didn’t help that the weather on the Sunday was abysmal and the day was a total write-off. Also I got a bad cold, but I don’t think I can blame Val for that.
I don’t know whether it was because there were more closed runs than usual, but I found the pistes in Val to be horrendously busy much of the time; scoured of snow and littered with crying bodies. Many were closed for high winds, avi risk or thin snow cover, which forced everyone onto a smaller area. A lot of the time it just wasn’t fun. It was better over in Tignes on the days we went there (and I loved Tignes on the PSB2013), but I can appreciate it would have been awful there in bad weather.
Dimitri from Snocool came over to Val for a morning to take me skiing off piste again, and this is when I started to understand the appeal of the place. We did four varied, interesting and mostly deserted routes (the back of Charvet from Grand Pre, down to Solaise from the top of Manchet Express, down to La Daille from the top of Olympic, then down the Hidden Valley from the bottom of Tommeuses). It was an awesome morning and definitely something to repeat.
La Daille was a perfectly ok place to stay. There’s a decent enough supermarket in La Daille itself. The buses to and from Val d’Isere are absolutely fine. We did like the town in Val d’Isere. There’s a lot more going on there in the evening than in most French ski resorts we’ve been to.
It was easy to get the bus from La Daille to the station at Bourg so long as you booked in advance.
If I was going on a solely off piste trip then I’d certainly go back to Val d'Isere. For a piste bashing trip, I’m not so sure. I’d choose Tignes over Val, and even then I think I’d choose somewhere else for a mid season trip. I would return to Ste Foy in a heartbeat.
Thanks for reading!
Mairead
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