Where to Ski And Snowboard -

Great piste skiing in southern France

26th March 2012, by Chris Gill

Complete snow cover on the shady side of Montgenèvre, but bare slopes outside the pistes on the far sunny side

I’m now at the start of the third segment of my six week spell based in the Alps. I’m in the southern French Alps for a few days before editor Watts joins me for a few days in the Val d’Aosta to wrap up my season (though not his, of course – he’ll be finding reasons to carry on skiing, as usual, while I and the rest of the team knuckle down to the process of producing the next edition).

Another week of warm, sunny weather has gone by since a few resorts got a modest snowfall. But here in Montgenèvre, as in most of the other resorts I have skied in the Alps in March, there is fabulous piste skiing to be had. Provided, as I’ve said in earlier bulletins, you are happy skiing heavy wet snow in the afternoons. (Or you confine yourself to high, shady runs. I may be able to do that when I get to Les Deux Alpes in a couple of days, but here and in Serre-Chevalier, where I’ll be tomorrow, that’s not so easily done.)

A couple of times today I found myself on what you might call packed powder – and very nice it was too (eg on the shady Troies Scies black, on the back of the otherwise sunny Chalvet sector); but mostly I was on the soft, wet stuff that has been my staple diet in March. The important thing is that practically the whole area is open, and that on the open runs there is perfectly good snow cover. No rocks or brown bits at all. Well, only on one or two narrow cross-mountain trails that get full sun.

What’s more, the pistes were delightfully quiet, particularly on the linked slopes of adjacent Claviere, over the border in Italy. But for the recurring presence of a party of British schoolkids, my guides and I would have had the Italian side almost to ourselves. Bliss.

Our friends at tour operator Peak Retreats have installed me for a couple of nights in the brand-new hotel Anova, slightly above the village in the recently developed and now more or less complete suburb of Hameau de l’Obélisque. It’s a cool, neat place – sharp decor based on grey, super-relaxed staff – that thanks to a new little slope and button lift is ski-in, ski-out.

Following the construction some years ago of the rather more traditional Chalet Blanc just down the hill, this place is the latest milestone on the resort’s steady progress out of the cheap and cheerful category into the mainstream. An upcoming MGM apartment development in the town centre will include a third smart hotel, I’m told.

But Montgenèvre has a problem that needs to be addressed: slow lifts. The lifts out of the village are modern and fast. Those above village level are practically all slow – the resort gets only two stars for our Fast Lifts rating, and frankly I’m surprised it manages two. I spent hours today riding slow chairs. Four-star hotels with two-star lifts is not a great recipe, to my mind. (The Anova, I should note, is so cool that it doesn’t bother with stars; but it feels like it would rate 3.5 stars if it did.)

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