French SKI RESORTS    |    Map of Germany

The French Connection

by George W. Schissler

Autoroute 90N out of Geneva, Switzerland, toward the Rhone Alps, is the way to skiers' heaven. The expressway whisks them to some of the most exciting terrain on the continent. Skiers are usually in a hurry to get there on ski buses from the airport.

But I think part of a French connection is with a rental car on circuitous journeys on secondary roads, where you take in the sights, sounds and smells of the enchanting countryside. Around bends in the road are picturesque villages, an occasional tumbling waterfall, a blue lake. And ever present are powerful, snow-capped mountains.

The sounds of rushing water. Horses hooves and a creaking farm wagon. Smells of fresh bread as you pass the local bakery or stop for lunch at a family restaurant. There is much to be savored.

GETTING AROUND ON THE SLOPES

Once on the hill a skier is amazed at the efficient lift system that lace together the slopes, trails and off-piste opportunities. Advanced technology allows huge numbers to be transported with minimum waiting. Trams, chairs, gondolas, draglifts-all are well organized and maintained.

The lovely, quaint village of Saint Martin de Belleville in the Three Valleys. (Photo: Meribel Tourist Office

When the Olympics were televised in 1992 viewers in America could see these facilities and the landscapes and billowing snowfields that seemed to run forever. And they became familiar with names like Courchevel, Meribel, and Val d'Isere, which were among prominent venues in the Savoie region. The first two are major resorts in the Three Valleys and are popular with U.S. ski clubs. Who doesn't want bragging rights about skiing in one week more terrain than in all of Colorado and Utah?

The blend of old villages and purpose-built resorts is colorfully exhibited in L'Espace Killy, the world of Jean-Claude Killy. It encompasses his hometown of Val d'Isere, a village that goes back many centuries, and Tignes, a 20th century complex that sprouted from the snow. The skiing terrain is connected and it is easy to move between the areas. In Tignes it is possible to ski 365 days a year, because of a wide glacier on which intermediate skiers can have a ball. And getting to it is different. An underground funicular, subway if you wish, travels underneath the glacier. There are no panoramic views on the way up. The reward comes when skiers emerge to see an area with 110 miles of trails cut through the snowfields and 57 lifts. And a vertical drop just short of a mile.

OTHER TOP RESORTS

Among other popular destinations in Savoie are LaPlagne and Les Arcs. The first was the site of Olympic bobsled and luge events. Skiers marvel, however, at the fact that LaPlagne is really a series of communities on 10 different levels, woven into more snow-blanketed terrain than they can navigate in a week.

Lyon, France's third largest city is known for many things,
a few of which are: cuisine, sightseeing and arrival city
to ski the French Alps.

Les Arcs, also a tiered resort on several levels, is known for its great snow and diversity-a slope for every member of the skiing family from beginner to adventurous extreme skier or snowboarder. The Olympic speed track is here for anyone wishing to test his skill or daring by rushing past the electric timer at more than 100 miles an hour.A more discreet diversion is to watch the daredevils from an outdoor restaurant near the slope.

Names that are top of mind in the neighboring state of Haute Savoie are fashionable Megeve, which considers itself the St. Moritz of France, and the resorts of Morzine, Avoriaz, Flaine, and Chamonix. Morzine and Avoriaz are in the Portes du Soleil, the huge international ski complex that France shares with Switzerland.

(In the Switzerland section of this book see the Swiss Sampler account of skiing across borders.)

These and many other resorts can be explored by visiting their websites, which are identified in the front of the book.

THE CHAMONIX EXPERIENCE

An awesome view in Chamonix.
(Photo: French Government Tourist Office

France's oldest ski resort has the world's highest lift-served vertical descent-9,200 feet from the Aiguille du Midi peak on the hip of Mont Blanc, down into the city of Chamonix. It affords the experience of a lifetime-the spectacular run down the famed Vallee Blanche.

It begins with a ride up in an aerial tram that seems to hug the sheer cliffs. At the top you walk through an ice tunnel out into the sunlight to hand your skis to the guide, who then ties you to other members of the party for a walk of several hundred yards down a slippery ledge. You hold onto a rope with a tourniquet-tight grip, because you don't want to bounce back down to town.

On the relative safety of a small plateau, you catch your breath and mount skis. The guide cautions that he must always be in front; he knows where the crevasses are-and that you don't want to spend eternity in one of them. You only have to be told once; you use good judgment and follow in his tracks. It's a two to four hour adventure, depending on long you break for lunch or stop to take pictures of the unbelievable landscape. Or the guide stops to poke a hole in the snow to show that you have just avoided a crevasse.

He leads the way through vast powder fields down to the Mer de Glace, gigantic blocks of ice which nature bowled through the valley eons ago. But for all its ruggedness the Sea of Ice can be negotiated by intermediate skiers, with a guide who picks the way and knows how to get down in case of a whiteout or severe change in the weather.

Skiers carefully track down into the Vallée Blanche at Chamonix.

However, and that's with a capital H, skiers must make sure he knows whether the lift is working. When Blue Book editors ran the Vallee Blanche, our guide did not know that a key lift was out of commission. We had to walk out from the ice fields on a narrow ledge, hugging the side of a cliff on our left, with the glacier hundreds of feet below us on the right.

"We climb out here," the guide said, pointing to a series of super-steep steel ladders against the cliff, maybe 75-feet-high. The ladders were almost vertical. To climb the ladder in ski boots, carrying skis, was a task that would make an insurance underwriter wince.

Peer pressure was unbelievable. Dozens of other skiers waited to make the same climb. Three or four of us were on a ladder at a time. We inched up the ladder, whiteknuckling with one hand and sliding the skis with the other, until we hooked a binding on a higher rung. And repeated the process again and again. If anyone had fallen he would have swept those beneath him down to oblivion on the glacier.

Soaking wet with the sweat of fear, we finally crawled out to safety to wait for a funicular train to take us back to Chamonix. It took hours to regain our composure.

CULINARY DELIGHTS

The modern resort of La Plagne offers skiers superb skiing
and aprés-ski.

Say "chef" and you immediately think French. Noah Webster would say, "But, of course." And folks who ski in France know that chefs don't only work at night. Some of their best creations can adorn luncheon tables in a mountain restaurant. The French don't have the compulsion to be on the slopes all day long to see how much vertical they can register. They dawdle over lunch.

One Blue Book editor recounts how he sat on a sunny terrace at the Grand Ourse restaurant in Val d'Isere, having a relaxing conversation with new friends. The main course was steak, done to perfection, rinsed with a vintage local wine. In the distance skiers were speeding on the Olympic downhill. Into a nearby open area other skiers floated down on parachutes. But why interrupt a fine meal to take a picture?

A gourmet approach prevails at dinner, where hotel dining rooms offer four and five-course meals, topped off with an array of artistic desserts or a tray of regional cheeses with exotic flavors and hard-to-pronounce names.

Les Grands Montets at Chamonix

A WORD ABOUT LANGUAGE

Although Frenchmen may seem less willing to converse in English than residents of other alpine countries, communicating with them is not a problem. You do not have to play charades to get your request across. A country that attracts many millions of English-speaking visitors a year recognizes that people in service jobs must be able to respond.

Nevertheless, a few words like "sil vous plait" and "merci" will bring smiles to French faces. And words like Okay and Wow don't need translation.

The Grand Massif and the resort of Les Arcs. (Photo: Nicole Nicolas)

BON VOYAGE!

We hope The Blue Book will help you make an informed decision about a ski vacation in France. The facts that we have gathered, plus other suggested sources, give you a good idea of how marvelous a ski vacation can be.

The editors have had many great times in the French Alps. It's your turn.

POINT OF VIEW By Bob Dever Thoughts About French People   I have had the opportunity over the last 15 years to ski many times in Europe and mostly in France. Meribel, Morzine, and Val d’Isere are among the resorts where I have enjoyed the country’s spectacular snowfields. But I have become an all-seasons aficionado. About three years ago I retired from business. One of the things on the list for retirement was to rent a house in some foreign country with the sole purpose of having a new place for family and friends to come and visit. I rented a three-bedroom, two-bath condominium on the French Riviera in a town called Eze. It’s a small town, nine miles from the Nice airport and five miles from the glitz and high-rise apartments of Monaco. It has the requisite medieval village---actually a UNESCO World Heritage Site. But most of all it’s a combination of a bedroom community for the locals who work on the Riviera and a vacation spot for the Dutch and the Brits who travel in from Holland and England. They are European equivalents of our Florida Snowbirds. My expatriate adventure began in May of 2003, well after 9-11 and well into the deterioration of the two hundred and some year relationship between the French and the Americans. Freedom fries, boycotts of French wines, reminders of what we did for them in two World Wars--- all floated in my mind as I flew from Philadelphia to Nice for the first time. I was a little bit apprehensive, but I figured that if I was nice to them they would be nice to me. But I have friends who asked how I could live there. Don’t the French hate Americans? A French friend of mine, one who is now a US citizen living in a Philadelphia suburb, once said that he thought Americans were truly unique. We were riding a chair lift in Vail and he said that in the time it takes to ride to the top of Lions Head an American will tell you the most intimate details of his or her life. On the other hand, you could live next door to a Frenchman for 10 years, and while he would be very polite, you may never learn his last name. His point was that the French tend to be less gregarious than Americans and I should prepare for that if I was going to stay in France for an extended period of time. My living in the south of France is well into its second year and in that time I've developed a view of the French. That view is that they're not a whole lot different than you and me. They luxuriate in their glorious history just as we do, rightfully so. They worry about their culture being overwhelmed by American movies, television, and music, and they have no more love or desire for a fully homogenized world than we do. They have a view of US foreign policy but, in reality, they know as much about American politics as we know about French politics and their sources of information are, more often then not, a very active, opinionated, tabloid, European press. In fact, they often are not even sure who’s an American. Many times I’m asked if I’m British. My French is miserable but the people in France do understand that I'm speaking English. Most of their English speaking visitors are from Great Britain and they don’t differentiate among American, British or Australian accents. It’s not much different than trying to separate a French/German accent from Northeastern France and the French/Italian accent you hear on the Riviera. Are the French as reserved as my friend indicated -- probably. But, not reserved enough to prevent their bringing bottles of French wine to my Fourth of July party--with American flags stuck in the corks. The French cannot be tarred with a brush of uniformity anymore then Americans can. They're individuals with individual opinions about everything from French, German, British or American politics to California wines. Pretty much like us. And they're motivated just as we are. For in a world where well over half the people live on less then ten dollars a day the French want to go to work, get the kids through college, and have enough money in the end to go out and play. Sound familiar? ******

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