Piste And quiet
Slope off to the quiet, refined village of Vaujany, which has one of the world’s biggest ski areas at the top of its lift
EASILY SLED Virtual reality toboggan run is loads of fun
Ski and the world skis with you, as the saying (probably) goes. It often feels like that, when you’re dodging packs of paralleling piste bunnies and pole-free children whizzing past.
And especially when you are clumping along trying to find space on a heaving mountainside restaurant terrace for a hot chocolate.
Of course, it depends when you go. These days it’s midweek or bust for a quieter break – with halfterm skiing surely only for extroverts with offshore funding.
And of course, it depends where. I’ve enjoyed emptier slopes in Scandi zones, but the price for that is often après ski drinks that cost a kidney and evenings that finish at 8pm.
But relative peace always means compromise and a smaller experience all round. Or does it? I certainly hadn’t expected to find the answer in the French Alps. Here, along the deep, granite walls of the Romanche Valley, a string of small villages offer chairlift or telephérique access to Alpe d’Huez, one of the world’s largest ski areas, while managing to hide discreetly away from the scrum themselves.
Even the transfers are easier. From Grenoble you get to the largest of these villages, Vaujany (rhyme it with Beaujolais…) in an hour-and-a-half, avoiding an extra hour of hairpin bends to Alpe d’Huez itself.
On the way you pass purpose-built Auris en Oisans, linked to Alpe d’Huez by the Sarenne glacier and tiny, traditional Villard Reculas with its wooden Alpine character and views of watercolour mountains.
Here, development has stood still, with a ski hire shop, bar and one restaurant, Le Comptoir du Villard.
You don’t come here for nightlife, but if you want fondue accompanied by a charcuterie counter and two ski instructors nursing a beer then it’s your place.
Further on, Oz en Oisans, another small resort with a big snow front, is car-free, known for ice climbing and set to be joined to another village, Allemont, by cable car next year.
Vaujany though was the genesis of all this ski Zen in the 1980s, after the French Government compulsorily purchased land here for a huge hydro-electric scheme.
Canny locals invested in the minibus-sized cable-car and a ski satellite was born.
Now one of France’s richest villages, Vaujany itself is set over three levels with lifts between each and enough bars and restaurants to feel like you’ve actually come on holiday. Family amenities are good
If you want a great fondue and a quiet beer or two, this is the place for you
too – including an ice rink, spa, pool and crèche for kids from six months old, rare for this age range in the Alps.
We settled into 10-room catered Chalet Saskia, five minutes’ walk from the cable car up to L’Alpette in Alpe d’Huez. “New normal” ski rules mean hand sanitisers at lift stations and restricted numbers in cable cars – including family bubbles in gondolas.
You’ll have to mask up in indoor public spaces and on public transport – which includes ski lifts – and keep a metre social distance.
But even with all the adjustments it still only takes four short minutes to rise through a cloud sea to sunshine like the Ski Gods of Mount Olympus.
Up at 2,045m, the world is big and busy: 250km of pistes, restaurants and vast views, the most stunning of which is Pic Blanc at 3,330m, from where you can see one fifth of France. Apparently.
I wasn’t quite ready for the Alps’ longest black run, La Sarenne – which drops 16km from the Pic Blanc summit – or the area’s 70 off-piste routes. Instead, I opted for a lesson with ESF instructor Quentin, who whisked me through the bells, jumps and slalom poles of Marcel’s Farm fun run lower down, and some steepish blues, before depositing me at a virtual reality toboggan run. Here you can wear a VR headset to catch cartoon sheep as you whip round the track.
Alpe d’Huez’s real pleasure though is the scale of its piste network; you can ski for an hour here without taking any lifts.
There’s an art to knowing when to leave the party though so as the last chairlift swung to a halt each night, we descended happily to our hideaway for fireside aperitifs and candlelit four-course meals.
On the mountain, they might be drinking to techno beats but down in the dark, quiet valley, you need nothing more than a nice glass of Malbec and a soak in the outdoor hot tub, amid mountains quilted in stone and snow. You can always stay local for skiing too, if you wish – cheaper passes are available and what you miss in scale and “ski in, ski out” properties, you make up for with chilled out slopes, even at weekends.
To get up to Villard Reculas’ ski area, seek out the lift – which appears like a Narnia lamppost in a snowy clearing – to join a chairlift to the slopes at the top and new free-ride zone La Forêt.
Vaujany’s ski area at Montfrais is reached by a nail-biting ride over an escarpment, opening out to blues and greens with a nursery slope served by a magic-carpet lift.
But you’re only ever one or two chairlifts away from wider horizons.
Gliding over pine and pillowy drifts pockmarked with the prints of chamois and marmot I’d connected with my inner ski introvert.
My new ski holiday motto: Stay small, think big… and always carry a full ski pass.