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Courchevel 1850 Trip 03/02/13-10/02/13

 Poster: A snowHead
Poster: A snowHead
Hi guys

Just thought I'd drop by with a few thoughts from last week's holiday in Courch. Amazing place, great snow conditions all week and we had a blast.

Went with OH & her family (mum, dad, bro, sis) and stayed in the Ski Total chalet-hotel at Coq du Bruyere. Has some up-and-down reviews on Tripadvisor but we found it to be comfortable (albeit basic and a bit tired) as a less expensive option (if there is such a thing) in Courch 1850. Great location too, practically ski-in, ski-out as it's about 2 mins from the main Verdon gondola and one of the pistes to the Plantrey lift. As we found with last year's Ski Total holiday, the food in hotel was excellent (albeit with some up-and-down service), and the staff were pretty decent, especially the hotel manageress and the on-piste Ski Total rep, Kirsty.

Had a reasonable lesson (tip: book the 12pm-2pm slot as it's much cheaper than the morning - E120 for 4 of us, i.e. just 30 Euros each for a 2 hr lesson) with Franco from the ESF in Courch 1850 on the Tuesday. A reasonable mix of throwing us down some more challenging reds, as well as working on some simple techniques on different conditions. I realised I ski much better when pole-planting on most surfaces, and have been leaning back and "sitting" far too much in recent ski trips. Also got some good tips on negotiating bumps and moghuls, which came in useful later in the week due to Courch's somewhat occasional pisteing of some of the runs.

I'd posted on here pre-trip (see http://snowheads.com/ski-forum/viewtopic.php?p=2216717#2216717) about trying some trickier runs as a reasonable early intermediate skier, and managed to get down the tough steep chute into Combe de Saulire (which really should be a black, I think) in flat light on day 5, and also did Dou Des Lanches (great run, the steep bit at the end was bumpy but with thick powder on the day we did it, so was within my capabilities to get down without a fall, albeit not very gracefully) and Jockeys, which was a bit icey when we did it but probably not any tougher than some of the reds.

Managed to get all the way across the 3 Valleys on the Friday, with the Ski Total guided trip (for some reason, the reps in resort have had an altercation with the ESF, including a court case, meaning they're not currently allowed to do guided skiing in company clothing, so Kirsty and a couple of the other ST reps [dressed in their civvies] took us over to Val Thorens and Orelle under the guise of "social skiing"). Didn't really enjoy this as much as some of our other ventures outside of Courch (namely, trips to Meribel and Mottaret on Tues and Weds), as it seemed to involve a lot of time on lifts for less skiing than I'd like, and was extremely cold up on the VT glacier. It was great to get all the way to Orelle (the "4th valley") and the summit of the 3V before doing the very enjoyable red from there, however, and overall the 3V tour is probably more worthwhile than the trip across the Swiss "four valleys" (Verbier to Veysonnaz) we did last year, which is much more strung-out and tedious.

Runs-wise, pretty much all the best skiing seemed to be in Courch. Although the low cloud & snowfall in the afternoon most days meant that we didn't ski all the runs towards the top of the valley to Saulire, we did pretty much everything below the top of Verdons, in 1850, 1650, 1550, La Tania and La Praz. OH's dad is a bit more resilient to high altitude stormcloud skiing, and managed to add a couple of the higher altitude reds (Marmottes and Creux, I think) to our list.

Too many awesome runs to list, but I had probably my two favourite skiing experiences so far - on Wednesday, after a huge dump of powder overnight, coming down the Chenus red back into 1850 first thing in the morning. Run virtually deserted, with at least a foot of soft powder covering the run & the off-piste areas to the side. Shooting down virgin slopes with powder up to our knees, on and off-piste, and having a great time. Then, on the Saturday, going over to 1650 (we'd tried earlier in the week, but missed the turning on a heavy powder day when the piste was well-covered). After some gentle blue-run skiing with OH's mum in the morning, before lunch we went up to the Chapelets chair, and did a couple of rounds of each of the three reds up there. Amazing difference in conditions and character on each one - Chapelets itself, a big, sweeping motorway of corduroy that you could get some nice speed up on. Rochers, which was badly marked by flags and thus had been basically unskied since the big powder dump midweek, was totally unpisted on the short run to the chairlift, and so was a steep-ish powder run, more or less off-piste with a couple of bumps. Lovely but challenging. And my personal favourite, Bel-Air, which has also been unpisted but with much more traffic, so was really quite moghuly, but fairly forgiving for an intermediate who'd only just learnt to ski and turn on bumps, got some great rhythm going on the last bit bouncing over the moghuls.

Can also definitely recommend the Loze run into 1850 when there's been fresh snow (again, not heavily pisted when we were there, so nice and varied terrain with fresh snow, but imagine it'd get icey on a dry week), and the runs into La Tania and La Praz, especially Folyeres and Bouc Blanc into La Tania (Bouc Blanc, the red, was so deserted on one cold, snowy day that we did it three times in a row, and were able to follow a lone piste-basher down the third time after doing it in bumpy, powdery conditions the first two). Dou Du Midi was also a challenging but fun leg-burner, but is on the harder side of reds unless freshly pisted, I'd say.

Overall, a pretty awesome week. We were definitely lucky to have so much fresh snow, although it made conditions cold (don't think I'd ever go to Val Thorens except maybe in April or sometime like that, bit too cold for me in Feb!), and was somewhat surprised that many runs in such an exclusive resort aren't pisted daily, although that added to the fun now I'm a bit more confident in powder and on bumps. The vast amount of varied blues and greens in 1850 and 1650 would be excellent for beginners and more timid skiers too.

Final shout-out for an apres beer in Ku De Ta behind the main Verdons gondola station - happy hour (4-5pm I think) they have two-for-one, so you can get two large beers for E5, which is practically a third of the price anywhere else in 1850. Pretty nice atmosphere too.

Off for two days in Switzerland (Flumserberg and Engelberg, apparently) at the end of Feb and after this week, can't wait!
snow conditions
 Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Thanks for the review Felonius_Monk, I am out there next week and really looking forward to it (and hoping the superb conditions continue).
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