France - Les 3 Vallees (Meribel, Courchevel, and Val Thorens) - March 17-20, 2024

[skiincy]

In December, @Schif and I were at a friend’s house and got invited to a planned ski trip. 

There were 8 people total (including us) on this trip. The dates, airbnb, and the bulk of the trip were already planned so we really just went with the flow for the most part. This was our first time traveling with so many people - we had to fold into what the majority of the group was doing.

We had a great time (with a few blips). But if we were to do it again - we would do 5-6 ski days and ski longer. It was awesome.

 

THE SIZE OF THE 3 VALLEES

The 3 Vallees claims to be larger than the top 5 largest resorts in North America — combined. The mountain’s main resorts are Meribel, Val Thorens, and Corchevelle.

There are something like 151 ski lifts and 364 trails. It was bonkers. There were so many different types of gondolas and chairs. 

 

SKIING IN THE FRENCH ALPS SOUNDS BOUGIE. WAS IT EXPENSIVE?

I’ve seen some videos about how skiing in Europe is cheaper, so I’ll drop our major expenses below in case anyone else is considering. All prices are per person.

• 4 ski days at 3 Valleys: $142
• Flight from EWR with 1 checked bag: $760
• Shared car rental in France: $93
• Airbnb with the group, in town (5 days/4 nights): $308 / $77 per person per night
• Brides-les-Bain Hotel for 1 night: $52

I left off things like airport parking and food because they would vary by person and exist whether you fly to Jackson Hole or France. 

Generally, I thought the on-mountain drinks were cheaper than in the US. Shots, champagne, and pitchers of beer did seem cheaper in France though. A pitcher of beer was about $20-35 depending on the bar. I remember paying $16-20 for a beer in the back bowl of Vail. 

So yes - ski tickets, lodging, and booze were cheaper but the transportation costs made it about on par with skiing in the US. 

Optional expense. More on this later….
• Emergency medical visit for a broken wrist. It included x-ray, custom cast, opium, and anti-inflammatory: approx $350

[skiincy]

The Commute to France

Friday: 2:30pm ET we drove from Philly to Newark. The flight took off around 7pm.  

Saturday: Arrived at the airbnb around 6pm france time (about 1pm ET).

The group stopped at a grocery store and bought an absurd amount of food. We also spotted this vending machine of cheese in Moutiers, France.

We hit lots of traffic so we had to take some side roads to avoid the traffic. We later learned that there's a ton of Saturday traffic because more rentals go from Sat-Sat. Thought the humor of PASR might like this destination sign.

The Airbnb
The house was lovely but had European quirks.
• Pro: It was the penthouse with a gorg view, walking distance to the town & slopes, and also on a bus route
• Con: a weird bathtub/shower situation, slopped roofs that made some of the rooms feel small

We went to dinner for pizza and wine. We headed to bed with the goal to be on the snow as early as possible.
 

[CaptDave]

have a great time!

[skiincy]

Ski Day 1 - @Schif and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

• 7:15am: Woke up! Grabbed some fruit and granola bars and strolled to the lifts.
• 8:30am: We scan the QR code and grabbed our ski passes
• 9:00am: We're in the first 5 gondola cabins heading up to the mountain. We took the Saulire 1+2 gondola up. 

The rest of the group was slooooow moving so it was just @Schif and I. So we talked about meeting up later for apres.

While at the top, we dipped towards Corchevelle. The runs were looooong and the grooming was beautiful. It was mostly cloudy with the sun peaking out occasionally. I think we took Creux or Marmottes down to Roc Mugnier. At the top of Roc Mugnier lift, we decided to do that area again because it was so fun.

The trails were for the most part empty. I got one of the Insta360 camera. I'm not sharing to show off my sick medoicre skiing ability but really posting the video to show how empty the trails were.   

This all sounds amazing. Why is this such a negative nancy title?

[dunnnn dunnnnn dunnnn] Mike caught an edge and fell hard. He sat there for a moment then slowly got up. As he was just starting to move going hella slow, a small 8-year-old French girl hit his snowboard from behind and brought him to his knees. I was behind him so I skied down to the chaos.

Side Note: I'm not sure how he manages to avoid the PA ski resort chaos, but somehow in the French alps with 4 other people on a ski trail - there was a collison. 

@Schif had crazy pain in his wrist. So we tried to find some sort of ski patrol. We went up the Roc Mugnier lift again and then skied to the bottom hoping to find a medic center. We didn’t find it. Instead, we luckily shared a gondola with an Italian doctor. Mike was just going to push through it but the Italian doctor suggested it might be fractured.

I speak French - kind of - so we stopped at patrol near the top of Signal and they told us where the medic center is. We ended up taking about 5 lifts to to get back to Meribel and skiied down the front. 

But wait - THERES MORE
We skied down Mauduit and it was lovely at the top. The trail got more slushly as our eleivation decreased though. Then all of the sudden - it got very thin. Like east coast thin. Like closing day at Bleu thin.

Then it became a dirt trail and we had to take off our skis. There was not a single sign closing the trail. We watched a few people do the same thing.

I took off my atomic skis and started to stroll down. I stumble a bit. My ski goes flying. I butt-slide through mud and slush trying to dig in my heels to stop. Mike fortunately watched my ski as if it was a golf ball going the distance.

   

Mike’s wrist is starting to swell very large. His fingers were swelling and there was a ping pong size ball on his wrist -- so he’s going slower. We retrieve my ski.

Laugh it off and head to the medic center inside the Parc d'Olympic at the base.

  

Mike gets an xray and a cast. Turns out it’s fractured. He was advised to not snowboard and gets a prescription for some medicine.

We’re exhausted by all the hoopla so we get on the bus hoping it takes us back to the airbnb.

But WAIT THERES MORE
the bus goes the wrong way and stops at a bus depot. So we end up back to where we found my ski and trudge through the snow. Bad things happen in a series of 3, right?

We say F it. Let’s get food at the base. It was quite the first 4 hours... 

Mike goes back to the Airbnb to rest and told me to go find the gang…..
 

 

Edited March 25 by skiincy

[momskeeztoo]

Wow! What a trip report, sorry about @Schif wrist, but he seems to be on good spirits. You had all your adventures in one day! 

[momskeeztoo]

And the sign is hilarious 

[GrilledSteezeSandwich]

@saltyant this is getting good and I like reports in segments like this..builds up anticipation..and he’s schif to us not mike. Already a mike lol but no Ike

Edited March 25 by GrilledSteezeSandwich

[skiincy]

Day 1 - Afternoon Session - Part 2

“This is about to get good …” - @GrilledSteezeSandwich But seriously anything would have been better than the mishaps of the morning of day 1.

@Schif goes to the airbnb to rest his broken wrist and I went to try to find the group.

I take the Saulire gondola up and ski the main front face of Meribel trying to locate the group. I took the Adret lift about 3-5 times because I only kind of had phone service, so it was a bit challenging to coordinate. After a few runs, I found them at Monche Bar (https://www.meribel.net/en/apidae/le-monchu-meribel/).

They stopped for shots, espresso martinis, and champagne - so I joined them for a shot and champagne. 

We took one lift together then we heard the sounds of Folie Douche in Meribel so we made our way over around 4pm. 

At Folie, we had apérol spritz and pitchers of beer. We danced on tables and sang our hearts out for about an hour.

In the gang was Amy who I brought to Jeff's preseason party maybe 2 (?) years ago, B&S who lives in London, L&D who lives in Philly near us (maybe we'll bring them to blue sometime), and S who lives in Atlanta. It was a fun group. 

Folie Douche closes at 5pm so we shut it down. Then skiied over to Round Point which was wild. There was a line to get in so instead, we headed back to the house.

Just as we got in, it started to rain and continued throughout the night. We were reading that it was snowing at higher elevations, so fingers crossed. 

We ate tacos with the gang at the house. Played some games. And went to bed hoping tomorrow would be even better.

Edited March 26 by skiincy

[saltyant]

14 hours ago, GrilledSteezeSandwich said:

@saltyant this is getting good and I like reports in segments like this..builds up anticipation..and he’s schif to us not mike. Already a mike lol but no Ike

Good, it has gotten. Grate that we received a detailed cost breakdown to report to Ski2Live so he analyze the figures and perform rigorous calculation to determine if they saved a lot.

+++++VIBES+++++ for Schif's / Mike's wrist injury. Sometimes I forget people's street names.

Edited March 26 by saltyant

[RidgeRacer]

Ooohhh espresso martinis. Nice. Folie douche sounds fun. @Schifget well soon sir.

[Schif]

I suppose I can chime in on this TR for a bit. 

Travel for those interested was on SAS (Scandanavian Air). Newark> Stockholm> Geneva. Then we booked a "mini bus" that would take us to the mountains. Turns out it was a full sized and completely full motor coach. Lots of traffic, but not terrible, pretty comfy ride. The only issue was that there was a transfer in the town of Moutiers. It's pretty much just a train/bus station town and we had an hour to kill since the traffic meant we missed the connection. Tried to eat at a restaurant, but in a small French town service is 100% on their schedule so we bailed after 10 minutes of trying to get a waiter to actually want to wait on us. At this point I wandered the town in search of a grocery store I found on the map. Slightly harder to find in person and I ended up running around like a mad man grabbing beer, wine, champagne, snacks, apples, and a huge hunk of cheese. A mad dash back to the transit station ensued with a backpack full of booze and a case of glass bottles and a bag of apples in my hands. Made the connection by the skin of our teeth. Bus dropped us off in the middle of Meribel, and it was a short walk to the Chalet. 

We were on the "3rd floor" which really meant going up a steep driveway from a hilly road, then up 2 flights of steps to the main entry, then another flight, then there was an elevator to get you to our floor, and when you opened the door you were faced with an interior flight of stairs which brought you up to the main floor of our 2 floor penthouse. This was obviously fun with bags and gear. Gorgeous place though and the views were sweet. After a long day of travel, the group popped a few bottles of wine and we made our way to L'igloo for some pizza and more wine. L ' IGLOO (2) (meribel-restaurants.com, and turned in ready to get up and get the first ski day in. 

[Barb]

Sometimes the most memorable parts of. Europe trip is the transit. Running around looking at signs in a different language and barely making train and bus connections. Glad you had a good trip, minus the injury. 

[GrilledSteezeSandwich]

14 minutes ago, Barb said:

Sometimes the most memorable parts of. Europe trip is the transit. Running around looking at signs in a different language and barely making train and bus connections. Glad you had a good trip, minus the injury. 

The logistics has kept me from skiing in Europe.  It’s good reading this report but everything about it is not for me…

[skiincy]

Day 2 - Cloudy with a chance of Apres - Monday

Here's a quick video recap of ski day 2 in The 3 Vallees. 

It was still raining when @Schifand I woke up. The clouds were thick and visibility was low in the morning.

The day started with breakfast of eggs and sausage with the gang at the chalet.

Given Schif's wrist and the weather, we got on the chair around 10am instead of 9am — hoping the clouds would pass. But it didn’t. The visibility was crazy low. I’ve never skied in worse conditions.

Since we could only see about 10 feet in front of us, the slower wet snow, and the wrist, we weren't going very fast on Monday.

Our goal was to go to Val Thorens and get up high where there would be snow.

We found snow but couldn’t go off-piste much because of the visibility. The videos and pictures I took were during some of best moments of visibility. When we could go slightly off trail, the snow was wonnnnnderful.

To start, we took these 7 lifts

1. Tougnete 1, gondola
2. Granges
3. Bruyères 1, gondola
4. Bruyères 1, gondola
5. VT27
6. VT35
7. VT33 - Cime Caron, tram

We skied over to Cime Caron and found a tram that took us to one of the highest points at 3200 meters (about 10,400 feet). It's the purple star that I marked on the map below.

For comparison, the BASE of Loveland Ski Resort is at 10,500 feet. So for the most part, elevation sickness really wasn't a problem during the trip since the french alps are quite lower (in comparison to the US west). BUT - Being at the top of the tram with full-on white-out conditions, it was a bit trippy in a vertigo sense. 

At the top of Cime Caron, it looked like hamster tunnel. We couldn’t see a damn thing. On a clear day, you can see into Italy and Mount Blanc - I suppose.

We skied down and holy cow. It was a group effort. Wind was howling. Visibility was awful. No more than 5-6 feet. Everyone was in it together and the cluster of random people helped each other. People stayed in small pods. A solo skier asked if she could ski with us. It was quite the experience but we made it down. It wasn’t that steep or challenging, just truly couldn’t see anything. The run was either a red or black. Here is a video of Mike heading towards Cime Caron after that wild run. The line of snow / mountain / ski was just all white especially at the top.

We took VT31 (a small gondola) and then we took Plein Sud ... only to find Folie Douce - Val Thorens. Since Mike didn’t party yesterday, we stopped for some fist pumping. 

Bonus: mike was instructed to elevate his arm. Fist pumping is essentially elevating it.. right?

Folie Douce is a bit of a chain. I believe there are 7 across Europe. https://www.lafoliedouce.com/en/

After the pitcher of beer, we headed back to Meribel to apres with the gang. But the gang went in early because of the awful weather.

One thing about 3 Valleys is there’s a ton of variations in lifts and gondolas. We took VT4 which is a double cable gondola that runs 3 gondolas together. It's in the video above (^^) We could probably write an entire post about the lifts we experienced. On the way back we took:

8. VT4 thé three gondola
9. Plan des mains
10. Pas du lac 1 to 2

We stopped at Round Point which was so fun. They have a giant umbrella that goes up and down, which was super helpful with the weather. They had a live British band. We danced to the hits of Queen with a ton of brits. Crushed a pitcher of beer - again. And had a great time despite the conditions and injury.

Mike was holding off on getting the Rx but by this point - he was in pain and the swelling was getting worse. So we stopped at Le Pharmacie for meds.

Note: Turns out the green cross in France is the pharmacy and not @GrilledSteezeSandwich favorite establishment.

We had dinner with the gang in the chalet. I think it was some rice and chicken combo that A made. And B made a homemade carrot cake that was banging for dessert. We ended the night playing a tortilla slap game and spent the rest of the night bullshitting with each other.

Edited March 27 by skiincy

[GrilledSteezeSandwich]

Thanks for the shout out @skiincy

[skiincy]

Ski Day 3 - sunshine ☀️ - Tuesday

@Schif and I skied with each other for most of day 1 and 2. So by day 3, we tried to do a group ski for a bit.

here is the ski day 3 video recap.

 

The sun was shining! You could actually see the mountains. It was so refreshing to not be in a snow globe. 

you could see a ton of fresh slides across the mountain too.

We tried to go to Val Thorens with the group but mostly stayed in Meribel-Mottaret. There were powder stashes just off piste and it was lovely.

The groomed parts eventually became quite scrappy in Meribel-Mottaret, so we broke off into a smaller group and went to Val Thorens. These are the runs we * think * we did. 

1. Tougnete 1
2. Combes
3. ROC de tougne
4. ROC de Tougne
5. Chatelet x 2
6. Mont Vallon
7. Combes 1
8. ROC de tougne

The group wanted to stop for hot chocolate and meet up with the full group. We wanted to keep skiing. So we stopped briefly and then broke away from the group but took Amy with us.

We headed over to Val Thorens and it was lovely. We wish we could have gotten there earlier. I think we did these lifts while at VT.

1. Granges 
2. Roc 1
3. Brueyeres 1
4. VT3 plein sud
5. VT15
6. VT4
7. Plan des mains
8. Pas du lac 1 to 2 to folie douche 

We went to Folie Douche around 4pm for the final hour and it was amazing.

note: after I posted this I noticed the shirtless guy and the couple making out. It’s basically the Jersey Shore. 😂

Again - crushed a pitcher with Mike, had champagne sprayed on us, danced on tables, people were shirtless or bra only, and you know - typical Sweet Madness stuff.

Since Folie closes at 5pm, we skied to Rond Point. But since it was a sunny gorgeous day - there was quite the line. 

We listened to the music and wish we had some backpack beers to jam out. 

It was S’s birthday so we all went out to dinner at La Galette (restaurant-lagalette-meribel.com). We ate fondue and raclette. 

It was delicious. 

we went to another bar for 1 drink and were up quite late.
 

We check out of the Airbnb the next day - so we had a bunch of bags to pack. We skiied 1 more day and switched to a hotel the next day

Edited March 29 by skiincy

[momskeeztoo]

1 hour ago, skiincy said:

note: after I posted this I noticed the shirtless guy and the couple making out. It’s basically the Jersey Shore

Hahaha. Looks like a great day. And what an awesome song, one of my favorites. 

[GrilledSteezeSandwich]

10 hours ago, skiincy said:

Ski Day 3 - sunshine ☀️ - Tuesday

@Schif and I skied with each other for most of day 1 and 2. So by day 3, we tried to do a group ski for a bit.

here is the ski day 3 video recap.

 

The sun was shining! You could actually see the mountains. It was so refreshing to not be in a snow globe. 

you could see a ton of fresh slides across the mountain too.

We tried to go to Val Thorens with the group but mostly stayed in Meribel-Mottaret. There were powder stashes just off piste and it was lovely.

The groomed parts eventually became quite scrappy in Meribel-Mottaret, so we broke off into a smaller group and went to Val Thorens. These are the runs we * think * we did. 

1. Tougnete 1
2. Combes
3. ROC de tougne
4. ROC de Tougne
5. Chatelet x 2
6. Mont Vallon
7. Combes 1
8. ROC de tougne

The group wanted to stop for hot chocolate and meet up with the full group. We wanted to keep skiing. So we stopped briefly and then broke away from the group but took Amy with us.

We headed over to Val Thorens and it was lovely. We wish we could have gotten there earlier. I think we did these lifts while at VT.

1. Granges 
2. Roc 1
3. Brueyeres 1
4. VT3 plein sud
5. VT15
6. VT4
7. Plan des mains
8. Pas du lac 1 to 2 to folie douche 

We went to Folie Douche around 4pm for the final hour and it was amazing.

note: after I posted this I noticed the shirtless guy and the couple making out. It’s basically the Jersey Shore. 😂

Again - crushed a pitcher with Mike, had champagne sprayed on us, danced on tables, people were shirtless or bra only, and you know - typical Sweet Madness stuff.

Since Folie closes at 5pm, we skied to Rond Point. But since it was a sunny gorgeous day - there was quite the line. 

We listened to the music and wish we had some backpack beers to jam out. 

It was S’s birthday so we all went out to dinner at La Galette (restaurant-lagalette-meribel.com). We ate fondue and raclette. 

It was delicious. 

we went to another bar for 1 drink and were up quite late.
 

We check out of the Airbnb the next day - so we had a bunch of bags to pack. We skiied 1 more day and switched to a hotel the next day

How many bags did you bring with you?

[skiincy]

1 hour ago, GrilledSteezeSandwich said:

How many bags did you bring with you?

Together, we checked 1 ski bag and 1 medium size

we both had small carryon rollers (mostly all ski gear & essentials) and a small backpack for plane things 

[GrilledSteezeSandwich]

17 minutes ago, skiincy said:

Together, we checked 1 ski bag and 1 medium size

we both had small carryon rollers (mostly all ski gear & essentials) and a small backpack for plane things 

Wow is that the first time y’all shared a bag??  I’ll share nachos, that’s about it…soon all y’all will be sharing a last name.  I didn’t know Amy was a skier.  

[skiincy]

On 3/30/2024 at 7:18 AM, GrilledSteezeSandwich said:

Wow is that the first time y’all shared a bag??  I’ll share nachos, that’s about it…soon all y’all will be sharing a last name.  I didn’t know Amy was a skier.  

No, we've shared bags when we flew to Colorado a couple of times.

I won't share nachos but I'll share a skig bag though.