Italy 

                               Spotlight On Courmayeur

                                                           (Originally written for OnTheSnow.com)
                                                                               by Ted Heck

Courmayeur in northwestern Italy is a resort where, before the founding of the European Union, you might have carried a passport in your parka. It is a hop, skip and a schuss over into Chamonix in France, on the other side of Mont Blanc.

Maybe schuss is not accurate. Bombing the Vallee Blanche glacier might be a ticket to eternity, if you fail to stay behind the guide and slip into a crevasse. The Vallee Blanche is one of skiing's great runs, through spectacular scenery and changing snow and ice, most often done from the French side. It is off-piste, but intermediates can handle it---and remember it forever.

Skiers who prefer to hear lilting Italian and cavort in different ambiance make the adventure from the Courmayeur side of Mont Blanc. They return via the seven-mile-long tunnel by taxi or bus. (See bottom of this profile for a closer look at this adventure).

Courmayeur has plenty of skiing of its own on the sunny side of the Alps. Two main areas, Checrouit and Veny, have 62 miles of groomed slopes that will please nearly everyone but hard core skiers. But they can wander into the deep.

Courmayeur, a colorful village with Old World charm, is popular with Italian natives and their French neighbors. But many British skiers claim it as a domain. They are comfortable here, perhaps because the cuisine, even in mountain huts, is a welcome change of pace from shepherd's pie and fish and chips. Many stay in hotels, which come in various sizes and amenities. And Brits may be world leaders in using self-catered facilities, bringing along their own cooks. The town has 3,000 inhabitants and twice that number of guest beds.

A lot of English is heard in the polyglot apres-ski scene, one of the liveliest in the Alps. A pub crawl among the many bars here promises a lot of fun after dark.

In addition to exploring the town, skiers who take time off from the slopes for sightseeing can visit Aosta, the major city in this part of Italy. It traces its origins back to Roman times; its ruins are worthy of mention in any guidebook. Throughout the Aosta valley dozens of medieval castles stand watch over the old Roman road.

The valley enchants skiers who ride up to Courmayeur via rental car or train and bus from Milan's Malpensa airport, which is 159 miles away. Geneva, Switzerland, is a more attractive gateway for many, only 66 miles away through the Mont Blanc tunnel.

For a view of another major resort in this region, see our profile on Cervinia.

Doing the Vallee Blanche from Courmayeur

Skiers meet their guide at the La Palud cable car station for the first of two trams up to Pont Heilbronner. After coffeee and rest stop in the mountain restaurant, they saddle up for the trip through massive canyons. It will take four or five hours to drop nearly 8,000 feet, depending on how often skiers stop to take photos and how long they linger over a picnic in the snow. The guide carries hotel-packed snacks in his rucksack.

The guide leads the way and tells the group when it's OK to leave the track and venture into untracked powder. But there are stretches where he sternly forbids anyone to ski. He does not want to be embarrassed by having lost someone on the mountain. To demonstrate, he stops to poke his pole around a small hole in the snow. The hole grows with each stab, until it becomes a wide crevasse with an invisible bottom. It makes believers of skiers. They follow the guide, very carefully, around other fissures and through strange new formations in this fairyland.

As skiers come down the valley the snow sometimes changes from powder to corn. Suddenly they are on the Mer de Glace, a sea of ice. Huge, blue-grey blocks of ice, shifting with the glacier through thousands of years, look like capsized destroyers. As skiers work their way through them, there are frequent pauses to look back in disbelief: "Did we really come through that?"

The last hour is in an evergreen forest on a narrow trail that may be the most difficult part of the journey. And then the group is in Chamonix, France, sitting in a sidewalk café and babbling about their day. The guide smiles and sips his Pernod. The skiers hail a taxi for the return to Courmayeur. Usually a tunnel ride seems long and dark, but no one notices. The cab glows with shared memories.