France 

                                     Spotlight On Courchevel

                                                                    (Originally written for OnTheSnow.com)
                                                                                              by Ted Heck

If you insist on a ski in-ski out vacation spot in the Alps, this is the place for you. Step out your door after a hearty breakfast and embark on a great journey.

This renowned resort is on one side of the Trois Vallees, the Three Valleys that comprise the world’s largest ski domain. An area with 372 miles of trails and slopes, interconnected with 180 lifts. An area into which you could put America’s six largest ski resorts and have a lot of terrain left over.

If you ski across the Three Valleys, say from your hotel at Courchevel 1850, one of five levels whose number signify their metric heights, all the way over to Val Thorens and back, you’ve earned bragging rights at the piano bar.

After a ride up to the top of the Saulire peak, you will ski down into Meribel, another fine resort, perhaps doing the women’s downhill course in a brief detour, or through Les Menuires, site of other Olympic venues. If you get an early enough start, some off-piste whooping is possible on glaciers above Val Thorens, highest ski village in the Alps.

In addition to surveying more territory than you can conquer, you will be amazed at the number and types of lifts. An operations manager of one America’s large resorts calls the French “equipment happy.” A French manager offers this rebuttal: “You guys are in the real estate business, using skiing to sell real estate. We are in the transportation business.” They can move more than 260,000 skiers an hour.

The trip across the valleys should be made only after sizing up many possibilities on wide-open slopes just outside the door of your lodge. Take some time to enjoy the ambience of the mountain restaurants in the Courchevel arena.

The cost of slopeside accommodations in low season can be more than $300 a day per person, double occupancy, for half board in a luxury hotel lifted out of a Hollywood romantic film. But if you don’t require a roaring fireplace behind the piano player, more modest digs can be had for a third to half of that price. Various levels of the village offer affordable rooms that are a stone’s throw from a lift.

The region is constantly upgrading, replacing old chairs with modern gondolas. But more important, every morning the resort issues reports on which runs have been groomed overnight. It makes the first decision easier.

For folks who don’t need much mileage on skis or boards, there are all the other winter sports, including snowshoeing, tobogganing, skating, ice climbing, paragliding, and sleigh rides. They can walk through nature’s marvels on 12 miles of paths. Those with itchy credit cards can stroll among many shops.

If skiing and a sauna don’t take the starch out of them, skiers will enjoy dining around and the nightlife.

Courchevel’s major gateways are Geneva, 91 miles away, and Lyons, a bit farther. High-speed trains from Paris (four hours) connect with buses at Moutiers for the last leg up the road that winds through those various levels.