Skiing in France

You arrive in Chamonix-Mont-Blanc and you understand it at once: this is not a resort, it is a manifesto. Mont Blanc above your head, the Aiguille du Midi splitting the sky, and you thinking that the coffee with Savoyard marc you had on the terrace may not have been the best idea before the Vallée Blanche.

France has the largest lift pass in the world — Les 3 Vallées, with Courchevel, Méribel and Val Thorens linked by 600 km of piste — and it also has something harder to come by: layers. Are you the sort who comes down at one o’clock for a hot tartiflette in a high mountain farmhouse? Val d’Isère will understand you. Would you rather wake up at -15° and ride a cable car with people who talk about crampons the way others talk about Netflix? Chamonix is waiting for you.

Then there are the classics nobody bothers to explain: Megève, with its storybook village where horse-drawn carriages still run. Avoriaz and Morzine, connecting to Switzerland through Les Portes du Soleil. Alpe d’Huez, with its 21 hairpins that cyclists and skiers both claim as their own. La Plagne and Les Arcs — Paradiski — linked by a cable that crosses the valley 380 metres up as if it were nothing. And beyond them Tignes, Les Deux Alpes, Serre Chevalier, Flaine, La Clusaz. Each with its own character.

Anti-recommendation: Do not come to the French Alps looking for a bargain. In high season, a beer in Courchevel 1850 will hurt more than your first fall of the week. Come if you want ski areas you cannot finish in a week.

If you ask me: in January, Val Thorens for the altitude (2,300 m, the highest resort in Europe) and the guaranteed snow. In March, Megève for the sun on the terrace. Never Chamonix in high summer — that is mountaineering, and glacier skiing on rough ice is a different sport.

Skiing was not invented in France. But it was perfected here.