Where are the top 10 Ski Resorts in France?

Like there are horses for courses, the perfect ski resort does rather depend on the activities you’re planning, but here are some pointers:

Best for snowboarders

For minimum crowds and maximum white stuff La Grave is my choice. But this is a resort where no amount of bravado is a substitute for experience. It takes 30 minutes for the cable car to take you up over 3,000 metres. Once you’re there you have 20 kilometres of snowy free-boarding stretching out in front of you, but you can quickly find yourself alone on the glacier and the weather is unpredictable. If you want a serious challenge with a bit more support then consider Chamonix.

Best for beginners

For beginners, skiers or boarders, head somewhere where there’s plenty of short, graded runs closer to the resort. Le Arcs is a bit of a mega-resort but the ski tuition for beginners is great. The Ecole du Ski Français teaches parallel turns right from the start, so no more unwieldy snow-ploughs!

Best for off-piste skiing

Really, there are no challengers to La Grave and Chamonix, although they are both very different types of resort. If you are in a mixed group then choose Chamonix to give the others options. But otherwise, La Grave cannot be beaten for off-piste excitement.

Best to stay a season

Val d’Isere is my choice for après ski. Sure, there are smaller, resorts with more picturesque charm, but Val d’Isere, has all the infrastructure and diversity to please anyone from 5* poseurs to grungy kids.

Best of the rest

• Courchevel for families.
• Serre Chevalier for Gallic character.
• Tignes for all-round appeal and a long season.
• St Martin-de-Belleville for the quiet life, and
• Méribel if you insist on your English breakfasts and pubs.

All popular French ski resorts are cosmopolitan places where it is possible to find people who speak English as a lingua franca. But you will definitely get more out of your time in France if you can speak some of the language. If you learnt a bit of French at school, then consider taking a French language course to brush up before you leave. But if there’s no time for that then of all the countries offering international students high standards in language courses France is one of the best, so you can always take a short course once you’ve arrived, maybe scheduling your lessons for a rest day away from the slopes.

Where is Lake Mountain?

Lake Mountain is 90 km east of Melbourne but closer for us! So we decided last weekend to take a day trip and show Master 10 snow for the very first time.

The drive itself is pleasant as you head up the Yarra Valley past numerous wineries. We in fact have our GPS set to ‘dong’ if there happens to be a nearby winery and consequently it was ‘donging’ every few meters which was a bit funny. A pity we couldn’t stop!

As you head through Healesville, which has become quite a bustling little town and many were out enjoying breakfast at the cafes or the famous Beechworth Bakery, you start the incline into the mountain area known as the Black Spur. The Australian wattle was just starting to burst into colour and everything was extremely lush and green from all the winter rain. Much of this area was devastated by bush fire back on 8 February 2009, known as ‘Black Saturday’ but the regeneration is coming along and there is now much undergrowth.

We arrived in Marysville. My first visit there in many years and certainly since it was wiped from the map from the bush fires which resulted in loss of life, homes and businesses. Marysville’s landscape is very different to how I remember it. The tree lined street is very open and you can see for some distance in either direction, obviously where there were once homes, buildings, trees and gardens which obstructed the view. There is still much rebuilding to be done.

From Marysville we headed on up to Lake Mountain where there was still a sprinkling of snow to be found. Well, enough for the children to toboggan and build a snowman!

Cross-Country Skiing: Building Skills for Fun and Fitness

Map

TravelTipsPlus Google Map of Lake Mountain

One Great Reason to Visit Lake Mountain

One great reason to visit this travel destination is for the proximity to Melbourne for an easy day trip to the snow for some snowman building and tobogganing for the children and cross-country skiing for the bigger kids!

Lake Mountain Snow Report July 2011

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Travel Photo of the Week: Johnston Ice Canyon

Johnston Ice Canyon is located in Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada. My English friend Lavinia was fortunate enough to have her first trip to Canada recently and shared with me a couple of fabulous shots she took of the area. I particularly liked the photo below, with the angle of the canyon displaying icicles hanging in place of water-falling and in the background, the pines towering upwards.

Photo courtesy of Lavinia from Dorset.

Where is Davos?

Known worldwide as the host of the World Economic Forum, Davos is Switzerland’s premiere resort village, located in the eastern Swiss canton of Graubünden. The municipality is home to the second largest ski resort in the country, which sports six large ski areas – each specialising in a particular winter sport, such as the Jakobshorn’s large snowboarding pipe.

Davos itself is a picturesque village nestled within a valley between the mountains, and offers beautiful views all year round – the high seasons being winter and spring, when the valley sheds the snow and becomes a verdant beauty spot. Davos’ winter sports scene is the lifeblood of the village, and the resort features 320km of slopes, 75km of cross-country track, and Europe’s largest natural ice-skating rink – and is hence well-deserving of its reputation as the premiere destination for ski holidays in Switzerland. Davos après-ski scene is a little more sophisticated than younger ski resorts, catering to a more mature, affluent kind of crowd, though that’s not to say you can’t find a cheap watering hole if you’re willing to walk off-piste.

If you’d like a brief sojourn outside the town, you can hop aboard the Glacier Express, which tours around the Swiss Alps and even takes in the Matterhorn – offering gorgeous vistas year round, though the Alps in spring are truly a sight to behold. Sure, Davos might be known more for its skiing, but large numbers of tourists visit the area in spring to take in Davos famous mountain trails, which can by hiked or even viewed from the bumpy confines of a horse drawn carriage.

Skiing Europe: Tread Your Own Path

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TravelTipsPlus Google Map of Davos

One Great Reason to Visit Davos

One great reason to visit this travel destination, especially if you’re a lover of winter activities, is for the skiing and snowboarding.

Skiing in Davos, Switzerland

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