3 Valleys Snow Report: 18th December 2014

The instructors told me the snow cover on this important run is still thin and fragile, so the precious new snow was being moved by hand rather than risk damaging it with heavy machinery. You can’t say that this resort isn’t working hard to provide the best possible experience for its skiers in this low-snow December. Congratulations to Méribel’s ski instructors for their heroic efforts today.

The 3 Valleys ski area is doing much better than most other ski areas in Europe. Already, there are 69 lifts and 112 pistes open in the ski area, many of which are in high, snow-sure Val Thorens. More lifts are due to open this weekend for Christmas week thanks to some fresh snow and the snow cannons. Not all of the Méribel and Courchevel ski areas will be open next week – an official decision on which runs will be made on Friday – but those in the know suggest almost half of the runs in Méribel and Courchevel will be open and 80% of the runs in Val Thorens. This, according to the heads of Méribel’s two lift companies, will give the largest ski area open anywhere in France.

This week, there haven’t been many open runs open but those runs generally have good snow. The snow cannons have allowed more of the lower runs to open up (for example you can now ski into Méribel and down the main Truite piste which links Mottaret and Méribel) and last night’s fresh snow has helped the snow quality too. Things aren’t perfect here, but they are far from the doom reported by some parts of the press. There is skiing to be done here and it’s fine, just the choice of pistes is more limited than usual and there isn’t any off-piste yet. I’ve enjoyed lovely skiing in all three of the valleys in the pasts few days, with very few stones and only a few scraped patched here and there – in general, the pistes are in good shape despite the low depth.

What is certain is that the slopes will be busy over Christmas and New Year. New Year in particular, is always busy and this year the same number of people will be skiing on fewer runs. If you are skiing here over the holiday period, please do remember the skiers’ safety rules and make sure your children know them too, to reduce the chance of a collision. My advice for next week would be to get up early to enjoy the quiet slopes at 9am, avoid the main routes from valley to valley in favour of the more out-of-the-way slopes and if your legs are tired at the end of the day, bubble back down into the resort to avoid the busy slopes back into the resort. Happy holidays!