Ski Val d'Isère: resort guide

More Britons get their winter sports fix in Val d'Isère every year than anywhere else in the world – and with good reason. Both terrain and town add up to what is essentially the ideal ski resort. Linked to neighbouring Tignes to form a ski area of 300km of pistes and 90 lifts Val offers high quality, snow-sure slopes for everyone from complete beginner to veteran powderhound. Its long season stretches from the end of November into the first week of May.

Found at the end of the Tarentaise valley, Val d'Isère is two and a quarter hours from Geneva airport and one and a half from Chambéry. The village stands at a respectable 1,850m, with top slopes at an altitude of nearly 3,400m, beneath the summit of the Pointe du Montet. The top lift in Tignes is on the Grande Motte and reaches 3,456m.

Unlike so many resorts that claim a giant ski area, the pistes of Val and Tignes are naturally linked without the need for long and boring connecting trails or lifts. On top of that, the standard of piste grooming is extremely high and the lift system is constantly being upgraded.

Val’s snowsure slopes make it an ideal venue for a number of ski and snowboard events each year. Most important of these is the Critérium de la Première Neige, a Federation Internationale de Ski (FIS) competition in mid-December that has been running since 1955 and a joy to watch.

The town itself was not born a beauty, despite being developed around a fine 17th century church and a handful of stone farmhouses. In the 1930s, when the resort was in its infancy, accommodation was limited to a few unremarkable hotels and chalets and cars half-buried under exhaust-soiled snow lined the main street.

Beautification began in the run up to the 1992 Albertville Winter Olympics, when Val d'Isère's Face de Bellevarde (known affectionately as La Face) hosted the men's downhill, Super G and giant slalom, and has continued ever since. It is now an attractive, sophisticated winter town.

There is now a strictly-enforced no parking policy on the town's roads and mature trees line the main street where cars once parked. They are confined to underground car parks and a giant open space at the arrival point after the drive up from the valley town of Bourg-St-Maurice.

This autumn 2017, the town is embarking on an ambitious, £170million building project to redevelop the centre of the resort over the next five years. This includes two new hotels, a new piste with an underground moving walkway linking the centre of town with the lifts.

The Solaise gondola was updated for the 2016/17 season, with a state-of-the-art lift to replace the old Solaise Express chairlift. The 10-person gondola, complete with heated seats and wifi, has increased capacity by 40 per cent and can carry up to 3,600 passengers per hour, bringing an end to bottlenecks in high-season. At the top of the gondola, a new North American-style eatery and a free-to-use picnic area featuring microwaves and vending machines were added at the beginning of the 2016/17 season.

However, as in Courchevel, the Trois Vallées and many of France's popular resorts, prices are loaded to stratospheric levels – the bills for lunch on the mountain rival and sometimes exceed those in Switzerland. The volume of Brits on the slopes means it's easy to forget you are on holiday in France. But the fact that the British, along with the Dutch, Scandinavians and other nationalities (including the French) are drawn back each year speaks volumes for some of the most varied and exciting skiing and snowboarding in the Alps.

Getting there

Nearest airport: Chambéry, 120 minutes (145km); Geneva, 170 minutes (223km).
Nearest station: Bourg-St-Maurice, 40 minutes (30km). Regular buses run from the station.

More information: valdisere.com.

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Val d'isere

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