Does Size Matter?
The size of a ski area is one of the most important factors for British skiers when choosing where to ski each winter – but is that all its cracked up to be?
Well that’s a question, isn’t it? I suppose with skiing it could mean a whole range of things, the obvious alternative being the width and length of … skis, modern skis and modern skiing technology allowing piste skis to get wider and off piste skis to get narrower, and remain as good.
But ski area is a whole ‘nother ball game. Ski resorts have been going really hard on the size of their ski area; Paradiski selling 400km of pistes, Tignes-Val d’Isere 300km, and Les 3 Vallees – the megalopolis of Meribel, Courchevel, Brides les Bain, St Martin, Les Menuires, and now Orelle, the fourth of the three valleys – coming in at a world record 600km of pistes.
The trouble is, that’s a great sales tactic, but what does it mean for you? When the skis are on and you’re staring at a piste map, does the size of a ski resort really matter?
The Problem with Huge Ski Areas
Some of those numbers really are beggars belief. Last winter, I skied 539km (downhill only) – that's the same as London to Munster in Germany, as the crow flies, over 21 days on snow. The distance from London to Edinburgh is 630km. To ski all of Les 3 Vallees – without duplicating a single metre – is therefore the same as travelling more than half the length of the UK. As a reference for time, that 539km took me the equivalent of 4 ¾ days on skis, often clocking up 6hr days. The point is, if you are just skiing a week a year, there’s no hope to take on the whole the biggest ski areas in the time you have.
But fair enough, there is a flip side to that. A big ski area means plenty of variety. If you are a family of differing abilities – say Mum and grandparents just want to potter around between hot chocolate and lunch breaks, Dad and the kids want to disappear and ski, ski, ski – then having this variety is excellent.
But but, there is a flip side to that as well. Pushing resort area as a key selling point then allows lift companies to sell marked up lift passes to cover this wider ski area. If you are only venturing out of your “home” resort once or twice in a week, but have stumped up for the wider area pass, then you are wasting money on an already expensive pursuit.
There are some examples where this isn’t an issue – Tignes-Val d’Isere is a really good example of where the full area pass just makes sense (admittedly you can’t even buy a single area pass for more than a day!) There are (only) 300km of pistes, but there is a significant area of overlap where slopes are easily accessible from the two resort bases and actually I lose track of which lifts are operated by Tignes and which are operated by Val d’Isere. There is also a great free shuttle service meaning you can ski down into Val d’Isere directly from Tignes, and be at the far end of the resort 15 minutes later - you don't have to be attempting to complete the Four Corners challenge to really get value from this pass.
Paradiski is a great example of the opposite. It sells itself as 450km of pistes, spread between Les Arcs and La Plagne, each half made up of a range of smaller villages and resort bases. There is a direct link between them, the incredible Vanoise Express Gondola – however this links Peisey-Vallandry to Montchavin-Les Coches, two smaller satellites of the main resort areas. As a result, consuming more than half of the 450km available is an utter slog; save the money to plan an “away day” in the other half of the Paradiski rather than shelling out for the full area pass all week.
If you are staying in Meribel, then the full Les 3 Vallees pass makes sense - Courchevel and Val Thorens are just the other side of the ridgeline, making exploring the whole option a breeze. But try and making it from Val Thorens over to Courchevel for anything other than a tick in a box? Good luck. Once you're there it's time to turn around a come back again - and God forbid you're trying the same from Orelle ...
What are People Equating Size to?
I won’t sit here and claim that you’ve been sucked into the marketing guff put out by ski resorts – that is far too patronising. There is, after all, something bigger going on here, and its useful to look at the data surrounding ski resort choice by UK skiers.
The four biggest factor for UK skiers when it comes to choosing a ski resort are size, price, altitude and how busy the slopes are. Ignoring size for a moment, but the other three all inform the decisions people are making and why, to you or them, size does matter; regarding price, many people are booking far, far in advance especially if travelling with families, so they’ll go somewhere that offers value but plenty of variety, childcare, ski schools, terrain to explore, and, critically, a guarantee of snow.
Altitude = snow. Tying back into number 1, price, and booking somewhere with lots of terrain above 2,000m is a good ay to guarantee snow when booking far in advance.
And business? Again, especially when travelling with families and times of school holidays, more slopes means more space for everyone to spread out and breathe.
So, honestly and admittedly people aren’t being sucked in by the marketing of bigger simply means better; it’s a far more nuance decision being made by booking windows and value consciousness far more than anything else.
Smaller is Sometimes Better
Sometimes – and admittedly not all the time – smaller is indeed better.
La Grave, France, famously, has 0km of marked pistes – as does Silverton, Colorado, which sits right at the top of my skiing bucket list. I’ve spent plenty of time skiing in Tremblant, Canada, featuring 79.9km of slopes (yes, I have seen it marked that pettily rather than just “80km”), and is genuinely an amazing place to visit and ski. Kuhtai in Austria is a pocket-sized ski resort that offers everything you could possibly want to have a good time – great slopes, serious off piste including down the face of a dam if you are really keen, delicious cuisine, plenty of places to stay and, because it’s Austria, bouncing après every evening of the week. It’s also really high and snowsure, but a quieter destination without the crowds that afflict the bigger resorts.
Sometime soon I’ll put together a list of smaller resorts that you have to ski this season – but that’s for another day.
This is not all to say that big isn’t better. Nestling in a close second behind Silverton is St Gervais, France, for the exact opposite reasons. It’s France’s 3rd biggest ski area behind Les 3 Vallee and the Paradiski area, and ahead of Tignes-Val d'Isere … but that’s not why I want to go there. I want to go there because it’s accessibly directly by train from Paris (via a Gondola that connects to the station platform), it’s a beautiful traditional Alpine village, it’s a great ski area (alongside being huge), it’s France’s only Alpine spa town, and no on knows about it, meaning the overcrowding problem is solved.
Final Thoughts
The point I’m trying to make is, choosing a ski resort on size along is a fool’s errand, a chance to be sucked into paying more for a ski pass. Think carefully about why, for you, bigger is better; is it the crowds, the snow, or the price? Then approach your choice of ski resort from that angle instead.
