Les Trois Vallées: Flying high at the hearth and slopes: In the largest ski area in the world

Luxury hotels, gourmet restaurants and noble huts – Courchevel is the St. Tropez in the snow.

When high society celebrates the savoir-vivre in the well-known holiday resort in the French Alps in winter, skiing and snowboarding are just a side issue for many. In Courchevel and in neighboring Méribel, a sporty heart beats behind the noble facade – and quite strongly.

180 lifts and 339 marked slopes

The ski resorts, roughly halfway between Lyon and Turin, are a nucleus of French ski racing. As soon as the lifts are up and running at the start of the season at the beginning of December, young talents and their trainers whiz down the groomed pistes. Their equally elegant and rapid turns betray them long before you recognize their ski suits covered with sponsor logos and club emblems.

Together with Val Thorens, Courchevel and Meribél form the Les Trois Vallées ski area. With more than 180 lifts and 339 marked pistes with a total length of around 600 kilometers, the “Three Valleys Association” claims to be the largest contiguous ski area in the world. On days with fresh snow, the variant descents in the avalanche-monitored freeride area on the Creux Noirs are a dream.

Highest winter sports resort in the Alps

While the white splendor often fails to appear elsewhere because of climate change, it still trickles down quite reliably from the sky in the high altitudes of the Savoy department. 85 percent of the slopes are between 1800 and 3230 meters above sea level. That creates snow security. Valley descents to the villages are almost always possible. Especially in Val Thorens.

The test-tube settlement at 2,300 meters, characterized by castle hotels, is the highest winter sports resort in the Alps. The more charming Méribel is still at 1400 meters in the heart of the network. Courchevel extends with its various districts from 1300 to 1850 meters.

This means that the places are higher than some summit stations elsewhere. And should Mother Holle go on strike, 2,300 artificial snow systems will help out. According to the operator, they are operated exclusively with water and renewable energies.

Arrival by TGV from Lyon

The panorama of the Trois Vallées is always impressive. From the glacier below the 3561 meter high Aiguille de Péclet, the view sweeps over 1000 peaks of the Italian, Swiss and French Alps including the 4808 meter high Mont Blanc.

Les Trois Vallées is also a magnet for the high society. She likes to hover over Courchevel’s altiport in a private plane, or she blasts up into the mountains in high-end cars. If you are more environmentally conscious, you can take the TGV high-speed train to Lyon, which is a must stop for connoisseurs. After all, Lyon is the city of Paul Bocuse. The chef of the century, who died in 2018, has turned his hometown at the foot of the Alps into a Mecca for gourmets.

Celebrity chef influences in Courchevel and Méribel

Bocuse has also inspired top chefs in Courchevel and Méribel. The Trois Vallées are home to a dozen starred restaurants, but also simple, quaint bars with local specialties such as “L’Étable des Lys” in a narrow alley of Le Praz.

Even from a distance, the smell of cheese reveals that one of the best fondue and raclette rooms in the area is hidden in a vaulted cellar. Fondue, raclette and tartiflette (potatoes baked with cheese) are among the region’s best-known specialties, along with hearty sausages.

Enjoyment is at least as important to many guests in Savoy as skiing, which is why the alpine pastures are dotted with first-class huts. If you haven’t made a reservation, you need patience to get a seat in “La Cave des Creux” or in the “Chalet de Pierres”. French people dine there for hours at lunchtime. Champagne and red wine flow freely.

“Trois Vallées is so huge, you can’t do it in one day anyway – so why rush?” says the waitress in “La Cave des Creux”, before she opens another bottle of wine for a boozy round.

Luckily for the way home there is a very easy slope from the hut past the Altiport to Courchevel. And if necessary, the host brings his wine-loving guests down into the valley with a small snow cat.

>>> Les Three Valleys

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