Trying to expand on the list of resorts we’ve covered a new resort was in order and this year we went to Val Thorens on the 9th of Jan to take on the 3 valleys. Firstly a little about us for some perspective, we’re a couple mid 30’s with no children with about 4 years experience under our belts. In terms of our abilities we’re comfortable on anything piested, ok in moguls and dabbling in skiing fresh and deep stuff just to the side (and sometimes on) the piste. Inside out wise, we’re around the 8 mark (http://www.insideoutskiing.com/level.html),
I’d wanted to do some exploring so came up with the 3 valleys as a good option, hopefully managing to ski a good chunk of it and do the ‘ski until you see a lift’ type exploring. We booked flights relatively early and went with a Monarch option from Manchester to Geneva. Flight times were good, 11ish out and arriving back around 2. Seemed perfect for a leisurely trip to resort and also not arriving back horrendously late. Flights for two with Hold bags (23kg’s) came in at £230 which is pretty good, particularly as they call out that you can have 2 carry on bags each up to 10Kg combined so you don’t get that stupid easyjet discussion about bags and handbags .
This was our first time flying into Geneva so some research here was in order, particularly around hire-cars. Having done Val D’Isere last march and hired for the first time for a ski transfer I certainly wouldn’t go back, the freedom and leisure aspects pay for themselves... Research suggested Swiss side (for vignette and winter prep) and also saw some good recommendations for Hertz hire. Hertz had / have a January sale on giving you 25% off bookings up until March which brought hire of a JEEP!!!! (we didn’t get a Jeep ) to £120. 4x4, Winter Tyres and chains I thought we’d struggle to go wrong, although we’d never used chains before. Stopping off at Carrefour in Moutiers then heading up the mountain it’s debatable whether we needed chains, we were going well even when the snow was getting really heavy and many had stopped to put on chains. Not wanting to risk it and having no idea about putting them on we thought we’d find a suitable spot and watch some youtube. This video coupled with our chain instructions and we had them on in under 5 minutes and continued up to the resort, all in all approx. a 3hr transfer.
Now for some more specific details.
Accommodation
We looked at several places across the 3 valleys but in the end plumped for a design hotel in Val Thorens primarily down to the décor and the spa facilities (good indoor pool). When we got there we were slope side and right in the middle of resort, just above the Castor and Pollux carpets. The Hotel (Le Fitz Roy) http://www.hotelfitzroy.com/en/ were asked to source some parking which came in around £80 and was seemless from an arrival perspective. The concierge sorted, the bags and the car and if you had boots / skis sorted them in the lockers. The Hotel itself was very different to our previous experience of France in Val D’Isere and certainly one of the best hotels we’ve stayed in on a ski Holiday. The Bar and Restaurant areas were cosy but stylish and a quiet library area with books and papers for guests to read for a bit of peace. Staff were attentive and happy to either speak French or English, and many asked which we preferred (again to us unusual for France). Our room was piste side which effectively had us overlooking the entrance to the Malaysia nightclub (which we soon realised), liking to sleep with some air there was quite a lot of English noise at various points in the evening, but with the windows closed…. Silence.
Being on a Half-Board rate we ate in the hotel every night and had the option of either the restaurant in our hotel, or one of two in the sister hotel (Le Val Thorens http://www.levalthorens.com/en/). Our restaurant was French fine dining, with a second French restaurant in Le Val Thorens and La Fondue (Tripadvisor) which I’m sure you can guess what it sold. The food was excellent every night and the variety in the locations welcomed, as unlike the Austrian hotels we’ve visited the menu in our hotel didn’t rotate much. During our weeklong stay i think they changed one disk on the menu (excluding the daily specials). The local white wine we were on was Le Apremont, a reasonably dry white (http://www.wineanorak.com/wineblog/france/apremont) from the Savoie region, about €30 a bottle in the hotel. Going rate for restaurant wine i would say.
The Spa and boot room were on the lower ground floor. The Spa / Pool area had a couple of massage rooms along with the pool, steam room and sauna. The pool had several massage type jets and also a high pressure jet to swim against which was good for a cool down after a day on the slopes. The boot room had ski lockers for every room and dryers in each locker, during the peak morning and afternoon periods one of the hotel staff was down there clearing the steps out and also carrying equipment up to the piste. I’m not usually one for these extreme levels of service however the stairs out of the boot room were steep and not the easiest to negotiate in ski boots carrying both poles and skis so it was welcomed.
Daytime / Mountain Meals & Snacks
As said in other reviews we’ve not big eaters on the Lunch front, more ones to pop in for a drink to warm-up. This time around was our first ski-in / ski-out experience which further reduced our stops as we’d return to the hotel quite a lot of the time (more on that later). For the record here’s where we did stop, but really only for basic things…
La Marine – Dalles Blue Val Thorens was one place we stopped for a quick drink and it was packed. Coffee and a Vin Chaud came in just under €9 which seems reasonable at the current exchange rates. Tripadvisor
Mont Vallon – Val Thorens Meribel Link Similar kind of price about €9, nice outside terrace and sandwich bar. Inside and upstairs both a restaurant and a bar type area again with an upstairs terrace nice in the sun but nice to warm-up inside too.
Waffle Bar – Val Thorens Malaysia Entrance, having previously enjoyed the waffles on other trips the smell emanating from this place was one not to miss. €4-5 for a waffle was steep certainly, but good in the cold mountain air, not much beats batter and sugar.
Le Fitz Roy – Val Thorens, simple and easy as it was our hotel so if the mrs wanted to call it a day early I could leave her in the bar to work whilst I pootled off. Not cheap… Coffee at €7 and club sandwich at €25 its certainly not somewhere I would choose to go if we weren’t staying there. The atmosphere was good as the quality of the consumables was good but you’re paying for it.
La Maison – Val Thorens, right in the middle opposite our hotel. It always looked like a nice place so we decided to pop in one day and the hot chocolates were great, mountains of cream and sugary chocolaty goodness. We only stayed for drinks, but the going rate of about €9 for the two of us was evident. Pizza’s looked good though… Tripadvisor
The Skiing
We went with the full 3 Valleys pass, which in hind-sight was probably a mistake, we probably averaged in the region of 18 miles a day which for us is quite low and I was certainly surprised about how little skiing I’d actually done when looking back at Ski tracks. For me there were two real critical things.
1) It was busy… my god it was busy, I’ve never seen pistes so crammed full of people and supposedly in quite weeks!
2) The visibility was really poor. We had a day and a half of good sun, but the rest was flat light or freezing rain / snow which just stuck on the goggles.
Having created a list of pistes from posts on here I had a check-list of stuff to do from all over the region however the links were rarely open during the week due to the amount of snow which was falling. In total we probably had 1.5-2m of snow over the week and the pisteures were concerned about opening links due to the avalanche risk, no doubt heightened by Le Deux Alps and what happened there. Overall I thought Val Thorens was a bit disappointing in terms of runs, more specifically in terms of run variety and difficulty. This coupled with the amount of polling we seemed to be regularly doing with up-hills and flats I wasn’t blown away by it although this could be linked to the visibility, what was open and the repetitiveness i seemed to find myself in lapping around samey blues...
Lessons
We try each year to get some private lessons in, mainly to improve on our technique and this time after some recommendations on here tried to get something organised. The hotel was attached to Prosneige ski school which gave us a great deal for a morning with Valerie a Val Thorens local.
Having spent 3 days already in flat light and chopped up pistes / moguls we wanted some more general piste skills and skiing varied terrain. We went down the Le Menuires link to try some different terrain only to later find out it shouldn’t have been open as we couldn’t get back! Working around Le Menuires we talked about different techniques for dealing with crud, deep stuff and ice which brought many falls on my part but it was a good lesson and we both felt that each of our respective development areas were addressed and confidence was built. We struggled getting back to Val Thorens, they opened a drag (Montaulever) to get those who came down back up to Val Thorens, but only pisted a couple of bits (the steeped bit not being pisted at all) meaning an already difficult, old and violent drag wrenched you into boot / knee high powder on the steepest pitch. Needless to say 3 in-front of me fell off, and the Mrs behind me also fell off which meant I had to abandon too… Eventually Valerie phoned her office and they sent a car down to collect us allowing us an extra couple of hours of lesson for free!
Favourite Runs
I like to include some favourite runs, so people can get an idea of what we enjoyed (also considering where we are in our 'skiing careers'). I should point out though that there may be (probably will be) plenty of other great runs out there that we just couldn't access because of the state of the links.
Val Thorens – Lac Blanc– Red, a rolling run from the top of Val Thorens back down into the centre. Very busy towards the start of the week with several blue run skiers hoping to use tete ronde to get down (which was closed). Later in the week it was a blast, quiet and a nice one to work on fast bumps. Plenty of options down the bottom as you come right back into the middle of resort. Accessible via the gondola Funitel Peclet
Val Thorens - cascade – Black, unopened initially then open but unpisted this was a good leg worker. Quite short and not that steep at the pitch the moguls made for a fun run, accessible from the cascade chair it brings you back into resort via the bottom of Lac Blanc (Beranger).
Meribel (Mottrat) - Combe du Vallon – Red, a long red from the top of Mont du Vallon and off the mountain of the same name. As it’s a bit away from the main motorways and only Reds off the top it was quiet when we did it. Not pisted for a while and lumpy on the pitches it was a long run on which you could really work on your technique.
Courchevel - Saulire – Red, my personal favourite of the week, relatively steep for a red with quite large moguls when we went down but widens into a nice carving track. We were on a mission when we went down there to get to Courchevel for a day to make the most of our pass as this was the only day (aside from lesson day when we shouldn’t have) we went out of the Val Thorens ski area (not by choice I might add).
Runs to Avoid
There were a number of areas throughout the Portette / Caron areas of Val Thorens in which we seemed to poll a lot, however I can’t call out the runs specifically and I general I felt that we did more polling in Val Thorens than anywhere else we’ve been. The specific runs below are the ones I can remember.
Meribel Mottrat - Ours – Blue, linking from Val Thorens via Mont du Vallon takes you down this blue, beautiful through the trees, but flat and requires polling and skating. Probably better to link via the Plan des Mains chair, although we never took that route.
Val Thorens / Le Menuires – Bd Cumin – Blue, the link down to Le Menuires is long and it’s flat, again plenty of polling / skating. Linking via 3 Vallees above Folle Duce is probably better but again due to the weather we didn’t have the opportunity to link that way.
@Levi215, Thankfully on skis!!
I'll be spending the next few days trying to memorise the lift and piste map around VT...
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
These are my notes collected from various threads on here didn't managed to get to the majority of these but it was my bucket list...
Runs to do.
Combe de vallon - the side of mont vallon red
Jerusalem - Saint Martin de Belleville red
Praimint - Red (Saint Martin)
Christine - off funitel peclet red into blue
Saulire peak to meribel- string of pistes
Folires - la tania
Pylons - Black
Campagnoi
Creux - Courchevel 1850
Jockeys - Down to Le Praz (good snow required)
Slope-side Dining
tartiflette at the Mottaret Pas Du Luc mid station
If you are over in Les Menuires try to get to the L'Ours Blanc hotel. It is just off the side of the piste underneath the Doron Chair. Wonderful sunny terrace overlooking La Masse,
I think the dynamics of my group will keep me within the Belleville Valley & Orelle but cheers for the pointers! "Christine" gets recommended a lot, did you get a chance on that?
Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...
Then you can post your own questions or snow reports...
Nope it was closed all week :/
After all it is free
After all it is free
Had you pre purchased your lift pass? I'm meeting my family out there so we are coming in from all angles and had planned on picking lift passes up when we arrived. I've heard of horrible queues at the ticket offices on transfer days...
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
@letsgetpiste, Yeah we did, pre-purchase with the option of the Hotel collecting it and having it in our room for which they wanted 10% (not worth it). Automated machine in the tourist office was simple, punch in the number out pops a pass, your receipt and your Carte Neige (make sure you keep the paper, other threads on here about that being the only proof of Carte Neige).
Ski the Net with snowHeads
Ski the Net with snowHeads
Levi215 wrote:
Runs to Avoid
There were a number of areas throughout the Portette / Caron areas of Val Thorens in which we seemed to poll a lot, however I can’t call out the runs specifically and I general I felt that we did more polling in Val Thorens than anywhere else we’ve been. The specific runs below are the ones I can remember.
Meribel Mottrat - Ours – Blue, linking from Val Thorens via Mont du Vallon takes you down this blue, beautiful through the trees, but flat and requires polling and skating. Probably better to link via the Plan des Mains chair, although we never took that route.
Val Thorens / Le Menuires – Bd Cumin – Blue, the link down to Le Menuires is long and it’s flat, again plenty of polling / skating. Linking via 3 Vallees above Folle Duce is probably better but again due to the weather we didn’t have the opportunity to link that way.
I agree that the runs mentioned are flat, need a horrible amount of polling and are best avoided - however I wouldn't classify either of them as in the Val Thorens ski area. 'Ours' is Meribel, and the flat part of 'Bd Cumin' I'd classify as Les Menuires. I can't actually think of any parts of the Val Thorens ski area that you need to pole. Apologies if I'm being pedantic and you actually meant the wider area, but I thought i'd mention it in case someone read the report and picked a different area of the 3V based on the opinion that you needed to pole a lot in VT, which wouldn't be true (in my opinion!)
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
@Levi215, great review and thanks for the time and effort. I'm heading to Courchevel on Sunday and aim to get over Val T and the Maurienne valley at least twice, conditions allowing. Your tips will come in very handy.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
@Handy Turnip, Maybe poor construction, but i was referring to stuff on the Orelle side of VT, several Blues / Greens with up-hill / flat bits, quite annoying. The other areas are outlined at the front of the sections as to where they are.....
So if you're just off somewhere snowy come back and post a snow report of your own and we'll all love you very much
So if you're just off somewhere snowy come back and post a snow report of your own and we'll all love you very much
@Levi215, no worries. Thinking about it, there are probably a couple of areas that could catch out the first time visitor to the resort.
The bottom of Peyron in Orelle and the final bit of Combe de thorens would both need poleing if you're not prepared. However poleing on both can be avoided by building up just a little bit of speed on preceding descent. Hence why I don't see them as proper flats as they can be avoided once you know - unlike the Ours run in Meribel which is almost impossible to avoid poleing on as it's very long and flat.
I've been to VT 5 times now, and won't have to pole once during a typical week but I accept that for a first timer that there is areas that could catch you out.
FAQ
Poster: A snowHead
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) to £120. 4x4, Winter Tyres and chains I thought we’d struggle to go wrong, although we’d never used chains before. Stopping off at Carrefour in Moutiers then heading up the mountain it’s debatable whether we needed chains, we were going well even when the snow was getting really heavy and many had stopped to put on chains. Not wanting to risk it and having no idea about putting them on we thought we’d find a suitable spot and watch some youtube. 
