Getting High in Val Thorens (Val Thorens)

Member Name: Xtasy

Product:	Val Thorens
Date:	28/02/01 (827 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good off-piste, good nightlife

Disadvantages: Fun park and half-pipe sucks

I went to Val Thorens the week before Christmas 2000 and I had a brilliant time, despite some unfortunately poor snow conditions.

The resort itself is the highest in Europe, being at 2,300m, and it claims to have 7 summits or skiable areas above 3,000m. It is a part of the 3 Valleys ski area, and if you buy the 3 Valleys lift pass you have an enormous 600km of pistes to choose from. The resort is served by an impressive array of lifts, which rarely had a queue while we were there.

The quality of snow at the resort is generally good. There had been very little new snow-fall before we went, yet the snow that was there ensured we had a good time. This is due to 99% of the resort being over 2,000m, which helps keep the snow they do have in good condition. If lack of snow does become a problem, there is always the Péclet glacier to ski on. This offers skiing for about 8 months out of the year.

The pistes in Val Thorens are varied allowing people of all skiing abilities to enjoy the resort. There is some good off-piste skiing for the more advanced skier, although this was tainted for us due to the lack of snow.

I enjoy freestyle skiing in fun parks and half-pipe and I was dismayed with the facilities for this type of skiing. There was a half-pipe built but it was very shabby, and one side of it was very weak. There was a fun park marked on the map as being next to this half-pipe, but no matter how hard I looked I couldn’t find it. On the plus side, however, they had just had an international skier-X competition the week before we arrived and so they had a very challenging skier-X course.

The problem of the poor fun park facilities was solved on our last day when we skied over to Courcheval. They had a huge and wonderful fun park laid out with an array of different jumps to suit almost anyone’s appetite. If you do want to do this, however, it takes a day to ski all the way over there, spend any decent time in the par
k, and then ski all the way back. I would recommend doing this as it is great fun and you can try out the famous 3 couloirs in Courcheval.

The ski hire in Val Thorens is quite reasonable. I hired a pair of Salomon 1080s for the week (and a pair of poles) and this cost me just over £60. The skis were in very good condition and had been serviced just before I got them, so both the edges and bases were great. This is rather rare from my experience of hiring skis.

The nightlife in the resort is absolutely buzzing. The highest bar in Europe is called “The Frog and Roast Beef” and it is English-owned. There is always a great atmosphere in here as it always manages to capture a huge English audience. The food is good and quite reasonably priced, and the “pint-of-ale” entertainment certainly made me laugh.

The Malaysia club is also worth a try. This is a huge underground club, which must break about a million fire regulations. The music is cheesy in one room and house/dance in the other. We spent many an amusing night in here. Be warned, however, the drinks are not cheap (just like the rest of French ski resorts).

As I have said before in some of my other ski resort opinions, any ski holiday will be great if you have the right attitude and some good mates, but Val Thorens is as good a place as any to have that good time.

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