November 4th, 2008 - Posted by: Powder Monkey
3300 Reasons to Choose the French Alps for Your Next Skiing Holiday!
France offers skiing on a massive scale. At the last count there were 3300 ski lifts in the French Alps. Placed end-to-end, they would stretch for 1800 miles. That’s further than the distance between London and Moscow! It’s unsurprising, then, that France is home to the world’s biggest linked areas. Giant ski circuits, like The 3 Valleys, The Espace Killy, The Portes du Soleil and Paradiski, dwarf rivals elsewhere in Europe and swamp North American contenders 2 or 3 times over. The largest of these, The 3 Valleys, boasts 600+km of pistes – more than enough to keep even the most high-mileage skier happy.
Top of Europe - Val Thorens with Mont Blanc in the background
To get a slightly different perspective on the magnitude of The French Alps, let’s talk altitude. France is home to the highest mountain in Europe (Mont Blanc, 4810m), the highest lift-accessed skiing in Europe (L’Aiguille du Midi, Chamonix, 3842m) and the highest resort in Europe (Val Thorens, 2300m). Height is one major advantage France has over lower-lying Alpine areas such as Austria because snow depth tends to increase with altitude. Early resort developers in France recognized the important of building high in the 60s – before the spectre of global warming loomed large – when the first purpose-built ski ‘villages’ were conceived.
There were other good reasons that the French developers decided to build at high altitude rather than in and around established settlements as their Austrian counterparts had done. They wanted a blank canvas to realize their vision of convenience skiing and so chose sites with great skiing terrain and with micro-climates conducive to heavy snowfall. Unrestricted, on virgin land the developers were able to maximize the number of ski-to-the-door accommodations and so emerged the purpose-built resorts – Les Arcs, La Plagne, Tignes etc – we know today.
Tignes Val Claret from Le Lac
I hesitated over whether to write ‘know and love’ in the above because, while I do love purpose-built resorts and the ski holiday habits of the British public suggest that they do too, I realize they are not to everyone’s taste. They are a product of their time, when the focus was practicality and capacity. Aesthetic considerations were often ignored so that the purpose-built resorts do not live up to romantic notions of wood and stone clad chalets with open fires. That’s not to say you can’t find traditional mountain village ambience coupled with great skiing in France. You can. You just need to look beyond the big names. Take Monetier-les-Bains, part of the massive Serre Chevalier ski area, where narrow streets are lined with centuries old stone facades. Or the traditional Savoyard village of Saint Sorlin d’Arves which is lift-linked into Les Sybelles, the forth largest ski area in France. If these two resorts are new to you it’s probably because there are literally hundreds of resorts in France. With so much choice, why go elsewhere?
Skiing in France is all about superlatives – home of the largest ski area in the world, home of the highest mountain in Europe, home of the highest ski resort in Europe and home of the biggest variety of resorts in Europe – it’s no wonder that France is the preferred destination of British skiers. And all of this is less than 2 hour’s flight from your local airport. Check out our map of ski airports serving the French Alps.
Have a Pleasant Flight
Tags: Chamonix, Global Warming, Monetier-les-Bains, Mont Blanc, Purpose-Built Resorts, Saint Sorlin d'Arve, Serre Chevalier, Skiing in France, Traditional Mountain Villages
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