The world’s largest ski area, it would seem, isn’t quite large enough.
On our fifth day in France’s Trois Vallees, my party set out to explore the outer limits of the 40,000 acres of rocks, cliffs, mountain peaks, glaciers, wicked out-of-bounds skiing and–oh yes–groomed runs, that make up the three valleys of Courchevel, Meribel and Belleville, which collectively give the area its name.
Instead, because of my penchant for exploration and discovery–some might call it foolishness–we ended up nearly lost, 80 miles by road from our hotel in Meribel.
Early that morning, the clouds had just lifted over the Cime de Caron aerial tram, high above Val-Thorens in the Belleville Valley. From the top of the tram, we can see maybe a third of the skiable terrain in the area. We’ve already made a smooth and easy powder swoop down the front face of the Cime de Caron and now we’re ready to dip into the backside–actually into a fourth valley, the Maurienne, where Val-Thorens has recently added a new lift.
Arriving at the top, I ask two people who ought to know–the tram operator and an older man with a season pass–and receive vague directions on getting into the Maurienne.
We set off as per their instructions and follow maybe 20 tracks down an otherwise virgin powder face. The explorer in me is in heaven. We sweep down through the deep snow, each of us cutting off into small ravines before meeting up again. As suddenly as the sun appeared in the morning, however, we slide into a thick fog covering the lower slopes of the valley.
Staying closer together in the fog, we proceed downward, following the few tracks we see, until we hear a group of French people somewhere above us. It’s dark in the fog, and I’m beginning to suspect that we’ve extended the boundaries of “The Most Extensive Skiing Area in the World”–as the area’s brochures say–beyond the breaking point. Exploration’s great, but it’s usually nice to know where you are.
Six days earlier, sitting in Saturday-morning traffic between Annecy and Albertville, I never would have believed that I could experience such solitude–or get so lost. We had flown into Geneva, rented a car and headed out at what we thought was a fairly early hour.
Not quite early enough, because it appeared that at least half of Europe was on the highway with us. Because more than a dozen of France’s top ski areas are all accessed by the same highway, and because nearly every bed in all of them is rented from Saturday to Saturday, our drive from Geneva stretched from the normal two hours to about seven.
We arrived at our hotel exhausted but hopeful as a light snow had started to fall. The next morning the clouds had lifted, and we stepped into our skis at the front door of our hotel in Meribel-Mottaret, a mountainside extension of Meribel proper. We took a short run down into town and then headed up the Plattieres gondola to investigate the Trois Vallees’ claim to being the world’s largest ski area.
Even without pushing the limits of the available skiing as we were to do later in our stay, there’s plenty to keep almost anyone busy for weeks, or even months. From the easy cruising slopes of Courchevel, to challenging intermediate areas leading down into Meribel Mottaret, to the violent plunges of the Mont du Vallon or the Cime de Caron, the area offers vast numbers of slopes for skiers of all ability levels.
The skiable terrain in the three valleys equals about 10 times that offered by Vail, the largest U.S. ski resort. Two hundred lifts–including 66 chairlifts and 40 gondolas, perhaps as many of the latter as in the entire United States–climb the slopes of the Trois Vallees, and some 400 miles of marked runs descend them. And that doesn’t include the thousands of acres of off-piste skiing available.
From the top of the Plattieres gondola, we could see down into the concrete towers that make up Les Menuires and Val-Thorens in the Belleville Valley, as well as back toward the lower-profile, wood-framed buildings of Meribel and Mottaret.
Despite recent attempts to humanize many of the architectural blunders of the 1970s and ’80s, none of the towns in the Trois Vallees will likely win many awards for Alpine charm–especially when compared to Europe’s classic resorts such as St. Moritz, Zermatt or Kitzbuehel.
Traces of the original villages can be seen here and there throughout the area, but virtually everything in the Trois Vallees has been built since the 1950s, and the bulk of that since the 1970s. Although Meribel has a relatively strongly enforced building code that requires all buildings to have pitched roofs and wooden siding, slopeside behemoths nonetheless proliferate. And Val-Thorens is the archetype of modern French ski resort design, with nothing but reinforced concrete, steel and glass. The various villages stretching up the Courchevel Valley, meanwhile, offer a bit of both.
What they lack in charm, however, the Trois Vallees gain in outstanding organization and planning. Unlike at most European ski resorts, you can actually ski from one end to the other–a distance of many miles–without taking off your skis to cross a road. The car and skier traffic in all three valleys is kept separate via systems of bridges, tunnels and lifts. And unlike many other European areas, the lifts are laid out in such a way that you almost never have to push, pole or skate your way from one lift or slope to another.
Furthermore, despite the crowds that the areas attract–and they can be substantial–we almost never waited in lift lines. With uphill lift capacity of some 250,000 skiers per hour, the only crowds we encountered were at a handful of bottleneck points between valleys as skiers all hurried to make it back to their home valley before closing time.
Although the area is older than most U.S. resorts, it is a relative newcomer in European terms. Until the mid-1930s, the three valleys were largely populated by cows belonging to the inhabitants of a handful of tiny settlements lost in the high mountains of Savoie. Then in 1938 along came Peter Lindsay, one of the legions of British skiers who had been forced to abandon their favored Tyrolean haunts in the wake of Hitler’s invasion of Austria. Although Lindsay liked what he found, and soon formed a company to build a resort in the Meribel Valley, any real development of the site had to await the conclusion of World War II.
In 1946 Meribel saw its first ski lift, and by 1950 the Saulire gondola created a link with the Courchevel Valley to the east, where the local government had opened a small ski area. Then in 1960 Meribel was connected with the Belleville Valley on the other side, opening up the nearly endless terrain of the Three Valleys.
It was from near the spot of the first Meribel-Belleville link that we began our investigation that first day. The powder from the night’s snowfall was light and made a downy covering for us to glide on over the harder snow underneath. We took a few runs from the Mont de Vallon aerial tram and then headed over to try out the Roc de Fer, home to alpine events at the 1992 Albertville Olympics; although we stayed entirely in Meribel, we still had plenty left to explore when snow again began to fall as the lifts closed.
The next couple of days were socked in snow, so we tried some of the lower-altitude, tree-lined runs between Meribel and Courchevel. Although the majority of the skiing in the Trois Vallees–as in most European ski areas–lies above timberline, we found enough tree skiing to keep us busy while waiting out the snowstorm.
Of course, snowy days have a way of making even explorers like me want to stretch their lunch breaks into two-hour affairs, which we had no problem doing at the dozens of mountain restaurants found in the area.
On a coffee break and warmup stop at the top of the Col de la Loze, between Meribel and Courchevel, we found rich berry tarts, which we chased with bitter espresso and warming cognac and Calvados. Call it a culinary exploration.
Somehow, through several days of heavy snowfall and then sunshine and deep powder, we hadn’t managed to get lost. We got confused a couple of times, needed to ask directions often and consulted our maps endlessly, but we always got back home before the lift connections between the valleys shut down.
Then on our fifth day in the Trois Vallees, although we still hadn’t discovered all there was even in Meribel, let alone the other two valleys, I knew it was time to put this “Most Extensive Skiing Area in the World” claim to the test. We set out to explore the area’s fringes, Val-Thorens and its new area, the Maurienne.
After our initial euphoria at the untracked powder we’d found, we were feeling pretty lost in the fog until I heard a group above us. I shouted up to the leader of the group, asking whether he knew where the lift was. His 10-year-old son hollered back to us, in French: “You’d better not go too far down there.”
Working together with the French group, we traversed a large bowl and climbed up a couple of pitches for about 45 minutes, until the sunshine began to break through the fog again. I felt like a seafarer sighting land as the bottom of the only lift out of the “fourth valley” appeared in the clouds.
After catching our breath, quaffing a couple of well-deserved beers and eating a plate of hearty potatoes and an apple tart, I led my intrepid party up the lift, and this time came down the right side of the ridge back into the Maurienne for several more runs, staying in bounds and in the sunshine the whole time.
As it was, our explorations turned out OK, with only a minor climb up after one of the best powder runs I’ve ever experienced. But if we hadn’t heeded the 10-year-old’s warning, we would have descended through four or five miles of wilderness terrain before coming to a village at least two hours’ drive from our hotel in Meribel. He was right.
Having pushed the limits of the Trois Vallees claim to the title of world’s largest ski area, the rest of the week I let the explorer in me rest, realizing that sometimes it’s best to leave well enough alone. And although I don’t like to say so, I have to admit that the world’s largest ski area really is plenty big, even for me.
DETAILS ON TROIS VALLEES
How to get there: Although some travel agents will tell you that the best way to get to the Trois Vallees is to fly into Geneva, the traffic on Saturdays can be hellish during peak season. Consider flying into Lyon or Paris instead. From Geneva, vans and buses make the 85-mile trip to the Trois Vallees, although it is usually cheaper to rent a car if your party consists of more than two people.
When to go: The best skiing months are February and March, although ski season lasts from late November until April.
Accommodations: Each of the three valleys has a different personality. Courchevel, which is divided into the villages of 1550, 1650 and 1850 (each denoting its altitude in meters), is where France’s rich and famous stay. Meribel caters more to families, and Val-Thorens/Les Menuires is for high-altitude skiing freaks.
Information: Courchevel: 011-33-479-08-0029; Meribel: 011-33-479-08-6001; Val-Thorens/Les Menuires 011-33-479-00-0808. Or, contact the French Government Tourist Office, 900-990-0040 (95 cents a minute). For a copy of the French Alps Discovery Guide, call the 900 number or write the French Government Tourist Office, 676 N. Michigan Ave., Suite 3360, Chicago, Ill. 60611.
