Courmayeur comes clean on piste length

14th September 2012, by Abi Butcher

The Italian resort of Courmayeur has caved in to pressure and admitted to having less than a third of the amount of piste skiing it previously claimed to have.

As the latest edition of Where to Ski and Snowboard states, ever since Dave Watts and Chris Gill started to publish the book 18 years ago, they have been unconvinced by Courmayeur’s claim to having 100km of pistes.

But for the 2012/2013 season, the resort has come clean. It is now claiming to have 36km of pistes and 46km of off-piste runs.

“Though quite how they measure the available off-piste runs is, of course, another mystery,” say co-editors Dave Watts and Chris Gill.

“But 36km of pistes puts Courmayeur more or less at the bottom of the piste extent league table, where it undoubtedly belongs.”

Monterosa, also in Italy, has also backtracked after WTSS pressure, almost halving the run lengths it claimed to have last year.

“The total has come down from 135km – comfortably inside our middle-rank three-star category – to 73km,” say Dave and Chris in Where to Ski and Snowboard 2013.

Get the full story and more vital resort facts with your copy of the book.

• snow
• italy
• watts
• book
• gill

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