Go with the snow on Alps ski funday
Sample life with the village people in perfect French getaway says Anna Melville-James
SKI AND the world skis with you, as the saying (probably) goes. It often feels like that anyway, when you’re dodging packs of parallelling piste bunnies and pole-free children whizzing past or 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 half-term 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 hadn’t expected to find the answer in the French Alps. Here, along the deep, granite walls of the RomancheValley, a string of small villages offer chairlift or telephérique access to Alpe D’Huez, one of the world’s largest ski areas.
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 traditionalVillard Reculas, with its wooden Alpine character.
Here, development has stood still, with a ski hire shop, bar and one restaurant, Le Comptoir deVillard.You don’t come here for the 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, renowned for ice climbing and set to be connected with another village,Allemond, by a new 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 hydroelectric scheme. Canny locals invested money in the mini-bus-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’re on holiday. Amenities are good too – including an ice rink, spa, pool, inset, and crèche 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 number restrictions in cable cars – including family bubbles in gondolas – this year.You’ll have to don a mask in indoor public spaces and on public transport – which ski lifts fall under – and keep a 1m social distance.
It 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 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 jumps and slalom poles of Marcel’s Farm fun run lower down, before depositing me at a virtual reality toboggan run. Here you can enjoy the thrill of wearing aVR 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, and as the last chairlift swung to a halt each night, we descended happily to our hideaway again for fireside aperitifs. In the dark, quiet valley a good night needed nothing more than a tasty Malbec and a soak in the outdoor hot tub, amid mountains quilted in stone and snow, and bathed blue in moonlight.
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 is made up for by chilled out slopes, even at weekends.
To get up toVillard Reculas’ ski area seek out the lift, which appears like a Narnia lamppost in a snowy clearing, to join a chairlift to challenging slopes at the top and new freeride zone La Forêt. Vaujany’s ski area at Montfrais is reached by a nailbiting ride over an escarpment, opening out to blues and greens with a nursery slope served by a magic-carpet lift. Change your mind though, and you’re only ever one or two chairlifts away from wider horizons. Gliding over pine and pillowy drifts, I had connected with my inner ski introvert. My new ski holiday motto: stay small, think big, always carry a full ski pass.