Skip to main content
SeeValThorens

Val Thorens Snow Report : 7th January 2013

Is This The Best Week of the Season?

featured in Snow report Author Caroline Sayer, Val Thorens Reporter Updated

Isn’t January the most wonderful month of the year? If you are reading this under gloomy skies in Northern Europe you may disagree with me, but for we seasonnaires, January is the most magical of months. Why? Well, this weekend the holiday crowds departed and we went from the busiest week to perhaps the quietest week of the season. For the next few weeks, we will be amusing ourselves on the almost empty slopes of the 3 Valleys as if they are our own personal snowy playground.

The past two days we’ve been happily skiing in Val Thorens and Les Menuires on near deserted slopes. We’ve walked straight onto every lift, never had to queue or wait anywhere and been greeted in every empty restaurant like long-lost friends. Best of all, we’ve had entire runs to ourselves. After two weeks of sharing the slopes with thousands of others, it’s a joy to be able to ski at whatever speed you like and make giant carving turns across the whole piste width without worrying about collisions.

Normally, the pistes take quite a pounding over the holiday weeks and hard icy patches tend to appear. That hasn’t happened this year and the snow is in surprisingly great shape. We’ve been skiing in the Peclet and Boisment areas of Val Thorens and on la Masse where every run bar one was in great shape too. (The exception was the black run Rocher noir, which is low and has no snow cannons and consequently has some excitingly icy areas). Today’s Piste du jour is Plan de l’eau, one of the little-used runs in the Boisment area which was soft corduroy from top to bottom and there was not a soul on it. Bliss.

Today we checked out the new chairlift at the foot of la Masse which is a big improvement over the elderly and slow ‘dustbin’ lift it replaces. The new lift, called Reberty, offers a quicker ride and a much improved carrying capacity (from 600 skiers/hour to 2600/hour). After skiing la Masse, you can now easily access the Sunny Express or Bruyere lifts which whisk you up towards the other side of the Belleville valley and towards Méribel. Thank you, Les Menuires, for spending 4.4€ million on this new lift which will reduce queues in high season.

The lift companies’ willingness to invest in new equipment, even during a recession, is one of the things I love about this ski area. Another is its sheer size. Today I noticed a little red run I’ve never skied before, les Grandes Combes, at the foot of Becca chairlift. It’s an easy red running past charming little alpine shepherds’ huts above Les Menuires. I’ve skied in the 3 Valleys for twenty seasons and somehow never once taken this run – what a great ski area this is that it still holds surprises after two decades….

The weather has been unusually warm so far this season. My January blogs are usually filled with moans about cold chairlifts and frozen fingers and top tips of how to keep warm. This year, however, the temperature has been barely below freezing and we’ve even been able to eat lunch out of doors without jackets on. The snow is gently melting from my roof in Méribel and the soft drip-drip from the gutters combined with the balmy air keeps lulling me into thinking it’s April already. The forecast shows a drop in temperature and some snow at the end of this week, so normal winter conditions will resume shortly.

One nationality which embraces skiing at this time of year is the Russians. There are plenty of Russian voices to be heard on the slopes, especially in the Courchevel and Méribel valleys. Christmas on the Orthodox calendar is celebrated on the 6th January, so Méribel (always keen to attract Russian visitors) celebrated with a torchlight descent and fireworks and party in Mottaret last night. A very Happy Christmas to our Russian readers, and Happy January to the rest of you!

Stats

Snow Report
  • Alt. Resort: 1450m

  • Alt. Summit: 2952m

  • High Temp.: Nord

  • Alt. High Temp.: 1450m