Haute Adventure

Savoie’s Three Valleys is a peak experience for snow sports enthusiasts

Stand for a moment atop a wind-swept peak in eastern France with views in all directions of snow and more snow and gaze upon shimmering majesty of Mont Blanc, the country’s tallest peak, and know the thrill of French winter sports.

This is the Three Valleys in Savoie, the largest interlinked ski area in the world. Forget about skiing from one warm hut to another, because in France one skis from one distinctive village to another, from, say, the hipness of Courcheval to the quaintness of Saint-Martin de Belleville.

Three Valleys map

Skiing or snowboarding here makes famous U.S. resorts look like small-time operations.

Some facts and figures:

And there’s lots of ungroomed, off-piste slopes easily accessible in all directions.

A cable car takes skiers and boarders up the highest mountain face. Elsewhere there are gondolas, high-speed quad chairs, “moving sidewalks,” as well as old-fashioned Poma lifts and rope-tows.

MeribelA good base of operations for visitors is the Hotel Le Ruitor, a gorgeous inn built a quarter-century ago by the Fenestraz family. Its bar seems to be a gathering point for French ski instructors, who are happy to partake of Mutzig, a beer-espresso concoction that locals sip from liqueur glasses.

The valley draws more than 1 million visitors a year, mostly during the winter snow sports season. The best time to visit is during the month of French holidays every February that is split into two-week segments between Parisians and their southern countrymen.

This is awesome terrain. Take a breather after the tough run down Cime de Caron ridge, reachable by a cable car built for the 1992 Olympics in Albertville, and have lunch at the open-air restaurant just beyond the village of Les Menuires. Humble food such as spaghetti Bolognese comes with a hearty red house wine. The view from the patio takes in an ancient stone cottage nearly buried in snow and a line of white dogs fidgety as they await sled-pulling orders from their owner, dressed in an intricately embroidered leather outfit.

For much of the last century, this valley remained a little-known gem. Its history traces to medieval times. In 428, St. James of Assyria was given the valleys by King Gondicaire of Burgundy, and it stayed separate from France until 1860, when residents voted to rejoin the country. On the eve of World War I, the region had only 724 residents, and that number dwindled to about 500 by the mid 1930s.

When Hitler annexed Austria in 1938, it locked many European winter sports enthusiasts out of the popular resorts in Kitzbuhel and St. Anton. The vast, undeveloped slopes of Savoie quickly became a likely substitute. Its first rope-sled lift opened in 1938 above Les Allues. Hotel construction began the following year in Meribel, where a ski school opened eight years later.

Val ThorensSavoie has eight main villages, including glamorous Courcheval, reached by cable car; La Tania, the area’s newest resort and a base for cross-country skiing; Meribel, known for its backcountry access and its snow; Les Menuire, which has more than 50 lifts and more than 70 miles of groomed slopes; Val Thorens, the highest mountain resort in Europe, which boasts that 90 percent of its slopes are off-piste.

Today, Europeans and Americans alike descend on the valley because of its charm and its vast terrain. The region can get huge dumps of snow, so fat skis are more often than not the conveyance of choice. In the summer, Savoie largely returns to its quiet ways in the summer except for France’s enthusiastic mountain climbers.

Copyright Gary Olson 2006. First published in The Denver Post.