Ski Resort Review: Chamonix

At last, my long-awaited, much-anticipated review of the famous Haute-Savoie Alpine ski resort of Chamonix. For the purposes of accuracy, specifically, we visited the ski domains of Brevent and Flegere and also Les Houches. We went to Les Houches yesterday to watch the Kandahar Mens Downhill World Cup race. In this post i'll be sticking to the resort, and in a later post, i'll rabbit on about the race itself. Bet you can't wait.

To start with, we had a fabulous day. It was hot. You know it's very very hot when you need to de-layer your clothing at 2000m in the middle of Winter. It was so hot that on the pistes in direct sunlight it was more like water-skiing than Alpine skiing. Also, the contrast between the sections of the piste in the shade of a mountain spur and those in the direct sun must have been about 10C, which meant that you'd ski from slush into chunky ice and then back into the slush. Tricky!

The day began in the car park so already we knew it would be a good day. Actually, it started in two car parks so even better. First of all we parked in the Saint Michele covered parking and headed for the Office du Tourisme to find out where to go. It took us a good 10 minutes to figure out how to get to the tourist office thanks to Chamonix's rather optimistic signage. Once there i felt a bit stupid because it turned out that there is parking at the Brevent lift itself, and if i'd just carried on up the hill, we would have found it easily.


And that brings me to my first comment on Chamonix itself. It's really spread out. There are about 4 main ski domains: Brevent/Flegere, Les Houches, de Balme, and Grandes Montets. You can connect to Courmayeur in Italy as well.

These domains are only connected by bus. On roads. So, if you want to get from one to the other, you have to ski to the bottom (which we couldn't do because there's no snow on the lower slopes so we had to take the bubble lift), walk to a, ugh, bus stop, and then get on a bus. An actual bus. With wheels. On a road.

Yes, despite my celebrity status we were forced to pay for our passes.

In the Portes du Soleil, where we are now, if you want to get somewhere, you Ski!

Well, i suppose i can't ask the management of Chamonix to change the geography of their valley just because i don't like busses, but, coming to my second point, i really think they need to open up more of the existing domains, because both Brevent/Flegere and Les Houches are really small. We easily covered Brevent and Flegere in a day, repeating a few runs along the way, and Les Houches was no different and we spent a good four hours of the day in Les Houches standing watching the Kandahar.

That's Brevent in the background. The lift to it has a vertical drop of over 1km in the middle. i tried not to think about this as we rode it.

More lifts is possibly not too environmentally friendly, but from the top of Brevent, we looked longingly at some gorgeous off-piste that we couldn't go on because there are no return lifts. We did see people going off on it, but i assume you need a car waiting in wherever these runs go to get back to civilisation. i very much suspect that, given how small the domains are, that you need a lot of local knowledge for finding the cool back-country runs. We'll definitely be returning to do the Vallee Blanche which i'm looking forward to apart from the Arete (scary snowy ridge with cliffs on either side you must first decend on foot before getting to skiing the glacier) - so long as we can get a guide to do it.



By the way, my hot tip for eating is Chamonix is to avoid the Restaurant Panoramique at the top of the Brevent cable car. Firstly, the restaurant has seating outside with truly spectacular views seen safely behind toughened glass screens that the owners have written the menu on! So, in your holiday snaps you can see Mont Blanc in the shadow of the cost of the Soupe de Jour for 8 (eight) Euros. Stupidly high prices and rude staff with smelly toilets made it a great lunch time! The view was really really awesome though.

It was a bit sunny in the restaurant and we didn't have our sunglasses, and i wasn't going to wear my goggles while eating.

The ski down from Brevent brings me to my main point about skiing in Chamonix. The people who graded their runs are delusional lunatics who probably decided the colours from the comfort of the chairlift. Some sites give Chamonix a 1-star rating for beginner skiers. Well, i give Brevent/Flegere a black-hole-star rating for beginners. Firstly, you're on the edge of quite a big scary mountain. Next, the blue runs there are red and the red runs are black.

Just setting off from the top of Brevent.

We saw some beginners (including a couple in jeans and jackets that wouldn't be uncommon on Oxford Street in the Autumn - crazy) who were really struggling. Not surprising considering there's one green run that's only about 200m long, and then one blue, which is very steep in places and again, quite short. After that you need red runs to get anywhere. So, if you haven't read this anywhere else: Don't go to Brevent if you are a beginner!

Still on Brevent with Mont Blanc sneaking into the shot behind - poser!

Ok, so the blue runs are quite wide, and so are the reds, but, regardless, the colour grading for each run we did was definitely off by one. One red run we did, Combe Lachenal, was seriously steep, and very long. Relentless, i'd call it. And yet another red run, Combe de la Charlanon gave me sweaty palms just looking at it from the top. i had the deep burn (Ooh, it's the deep burn!) when we'd got to the bottom of it.


Strangely the black runs are still black, but then i guess you can only get to a certain point before it's so vertical the snow doesn't stick anymore! Actually, the "black" run down from Brevent was not as steep as two of the red runs we did elsewhere in the resort. i think they just let a bunch of kids with some crayons colour in the slopes on the piste map any way they wanted.

Natalie making a cool turn on Combe Lachenal - how's the angulation Phil?

The situation was completely reversed at Les Houches where the blue runs are green, the reds are blue, and, despite what they day about "le Verte" (the World Cup run which is supposed to be black), no black runs. Flattish easy skiing. i like to call it cruising. Les Houches is very pretty, tree-lined with nice bits of easy, bumpy off-piste, but again, the resort felt really small.

So i think Hermann Maier graded the slopes at Brevent, and Bridget Jones graded the slopes at Les Houches and, since then, no one has bothered to reconcile the two.

Having said all this, the pistes are extremely well taken care of. Perfectly flattened out, with no bumps, and the signage was really good too. So, even on the steepest slope, there were no unexpected bumps to crash into. Clearly they spend a lot of money their piste bashers (massive machines that "comb" the piste into a pristine perfectly flat slope and compact all the powder).

Also clearly, they spend no money on their chairlifts, which were horrible. My least favourite being Parsa, which took delight in squishing the (very muscly, of course) flesh between the back of my knee and by ski boot as it trapped my ski between the chair and the silly moving carpet they've put there to help you get on.


Anyway, all sounds a bit negative, but i guess i'm just spoiled by the Portes du Soleil (which is much bigger, cheaper, and less crowded). However, we had two totally awesome days in Chamonix with really excellent skiing and i'd definitely recommend giving it a try. You'd have enough to keep you busy for a week, if you don't mind busses. The view from the slopes is simply mind-numbingly fantastic.

A crazy Australian saw me trying to take a photo of the two of us and took pity on us.