With the best snow in a generation, what better season to sneak in a final few days in the world’s largest ski area…Les 3 Vallées.
Day 1
My family have been lucky enough to ski in Les 3 Vallées several times before, so we didn’t waste our time. After dropping our bags at our Le Ski chalet in Courchevel 1650 we headed straight up to our regular hire shop – Intersport.
The standard of equipment was high and my kids were particularly impressed with their Lange boots that matched mine – they decided immediately this would help them ski faster!
After picking up our passes, we headed up the hill on the new Ariondaz gondola and made our way over to the Family Fun Park in Courchevel 1850.
My kids love this place and would lap it again and again and again if they could. The fact that they have challenging ‘medium’ kickers as well as ‘easy’ ones adds an extra frisson, but the mix of skier X and park mean there’s plenty of options to keep the kids happy.
Flying off the airbag in Courchevel
Even better, at the bottom is an airbag, which is reasonably affordable at €5 for 5 jumps – and fun enough for the adults to try it as well (albeit on a tyre)!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLYbnSsfSoY
There’s even an igloo to explore – yet another activity that the kids loved…
It turned out that wasn’t enough to tire out the kids, so that evening we took them to the hugely impressive Aquamotion – Courchevel’s new aquacentre.
If you’re ever staying in Courchevel or La Tania, or Meribel for that matter, then I highly recommend you make the effort and make a visit. Your kids will absolutely love it (mine tell me that it’s the best aquapark they have EVER been to!) – there are multiple slides, outdoor pools and even a surf school section.
Day 2
The weather was good, so this was the day to get some miles in. We went on holiday to Les Menuires a couple of years ago and the kids wanted to get back over there and enjoy another great family area – the BK park.
I filmed a Facebook Live here (which you can view below). The 4G was patchy so the quality isn’t great, but you get an idea of how much fun it is:
From Les Menuires, we headed over to Meribel and tried out another, much bigger, snow park at the DC Area 43 in Meribel Mottaret.
Again I had the same problems with 4G for Facebook Live streaming, but you can tell from this photo that the super-pipe is for serious skiers and snowboarders only. This is the device used to cut the pipe!
Day 3
After a couple of big days, we stayed closer to home on our third day. We took the impressive Saulire cable car up to the highest point in the Courchevel valley and skied another few runs in the Family Park again (using up our remaining air bag vouchers in the process).
Then it was back to Courchevel 1650 to try the new Moriond Racing toboggan run. This 3km descent was new for the 2017/18 season and had to be tried out. You can see in the video below how we got on:
Although the snow was quite slow when we tried it out (it was an afternoon in April), it was still great fun and I’d recommend holidaying in Courchevel 1650 with their family.
An added bonus was the free photo that everyone can have emailed to them. This was the favourite from our group:
Overall, a great few days in Les 3 Vallées – the largest ski area in the world. There are less expensive ski areas, but there are few that offer as good value!