Meribel France, Les Trois Vallees
Trip Start
Feb 15, 2008
1
2
Trip End
Feb 21, 2008
Meribel, Rhône-Alpes, France
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
The ski area is huge. It was so huge, I was afraid to go out on my own because I'd get lost or end up on a piste (trail) that was too difficult. Indeed, when skiing w/part of the family, Alina got separated and we didn't see her again until the end of lunch 2 hours later. Alex and Horia listened to Andrei and ended up on an undesirable slope with five foot tall moguls. Not a place I'd want to be
Alina and Florin, Get a room!
. Even finding our way back to the hotel would have been really difficult in the first few days; our instructor guided us back. It is so big, that even a fairly large map cannot provide sufficient details, e.g., my hotel isn't on the map and I can't find one single piste that I skied on because they can't cram that kind of info onto the map. However, the lifts are all on the map-all 200 of them. Clearly the largest ski area in the world. The vertical drop as far as I can figure is about 6500feet or 1966m. Zermatt and St. Moritz have about 57 lifts, Vail and Killington each have 32, so this place is about 4 times bigger than any other ski resort. Having never skied at such a place, I'd never seen all the different types of lifts, but I think I went on all the different types: Chairlifts that held 2, 4 and 6 people. One speedy chairlift dumped you onto a moving walkway and then scooped you up. Some chairlifts had pulldown bubbles. The gondolas/cabins seated either 6 or 8 and then there were the elevator types that you could probably cram about 12-15 people with skis into, there were drag lifts (pomas) and I saw one rope tow, pretty much to get from one horizontal place to another. Mia fell off one of the longer pomas somewhere in the middle and had to walk back up carrying her skis (she wasn't too happy). One of the gondolas (Saulire?) went so straight up I thought I was going to be sick when facing the side that looked down. The gondolas all had multiple stops, and once Valerie forgot to tell all the folks in our class which stop to get off, and they got off on the wrong stop
Alina, Anka, Ariel/Alex & Horia
. Very big place.For us, classes were the way to go. They have umpteen classes for kids, but for us there were adult beginners levels 1-4. We ended up in level 3 by the end of the week, I'm not sure where we started. Based on the abilities chart, I evaluated my abilities at 1.5 to Alan (ski school guy), and he gave me that very French look indicating that whole numbers were preferred. Valerie was wonderful, and we could always find her because of her signature insouciant hair. All the instructors (1200 of them there) wore fashionable hooded red ski suits, and as far as I could tell, had alternative careers during the summers. Valerie, for instance, bought a restaurant on the cote d'Azure that seats 120 (20 employees in July-Aug), and Alan was planning to bike Route 66 from Chicago to LA for three months in the summer with his buds (dans mon opinion, c'est une voyage fou, tres difficile et longue. Bon chance, Alan.) I tried to teach him to pronounce Chicago and New Mexico in English, but he very Frenchly ignored my attempts, referring to as them Chick-ago and Nou Mexique.
The locals of course know all the mountains and the pistes and where to go at what time of the day so we got a great taste of the entire area by just being in lessons. Plus the instruction is positively excellent so we were much better skiers by the end of the week
Just a typical beautiful Meribel pic
. If you're new to the area, I'd say get a guide for at least a day or two, because you just can't get familiar enough with the 500kms of pistes in a day. The trails have different conditions throughout the day and some are more crowded than others, but you won't have a clue unless someone provides the definitive guide to skiing every piste there. Hey, maybe I'll do that in my retirement. (*Mental note). One day, we skied to Courcheval and we had an entire red piste all to ourselves because Valerie knows where to be. Unfortunately, I didn't figure out that we had to arrange in advance to got to Val Thorens because the round trip skiing would take four hours. In a timely manner, I received the brochure for the ski school the night before we left. We got a great idea of life in Meribel from Valerie when talking on the lifts. She had twin girls, 14, and during the week, she took them to a party on one side of the 3 vallees, and they were going to take the lift system home. Valerie suggested at one point that France was very much like the US, non? No way. There is nothing US-like in France except the Statue of Liberty in some garden in Paris. You can go ahead and try and export McDonalds and whatever franchises, but France is France. Viva la France! I can imagine the shock of America Alan will find on Route 66. I don't think he'll find crepes, pate or lapin.
Les Belles Femmes, CC & Alina
The slopes-I was a very intermediate east coast skier-since 7th grade, I've probably averaged skiing once a year and I can do the black diamonds around Pittsburgh. In the 3 vallees, they rate the slopes as green, blue, red, black and there are sticks all down the sides of the slopes to indicate the color. But there are various ranges of blues, red and I'm sure blacks. I thought some of the blues were incredibly difficult; they were all very steep so we traversed mostly. There were very few greens, mostly seemed toward the bottom of the mountains, though some were very flat and narrow with sheer drop offs. My last day skiing was not the best. In the afternoon, it was me, my kids and two English kids so Valerie catered to the kids, they received 2 stars at the Ecole du Ski after passing a test, and she went very fast because kids like that. They went so fast and I was at the end of our traversing class that I lost them after a fall for about 10 minutes. I fell on the same place on my derriere on hard ice about four times that there was a bruise and pain for a few months. The narrow seats of my Saab reminded me of Meribel often. Towards the end of our lesson, she wanted to take the kids through La Foret, and asked me if I was brave. Sure, I'm one of the bravest females you're ever going to meet. Valerie said, if you go to fast, you can snowplow to control the speed and off she went in the lead. This thing was more like an extremely narrow ice-covered luge run
Magazine Photo or the Romanian Power Couple?
. It had been unseasonably warm and it was like a curvy half pipe about 3 feet across. No way at all to snow plow down it. Throwing out my operations improvement expertise again, the correct advice given the conditions should have been, you must parallel the entire way and know that there is snow in the middle and at the end that you can stop on. Max and I with longer skis were a mess. I picked up his poles behind him and tried to ski on the bank five feet above the luge run. He and I cut out midway to meet the group down the hill, they took so very long, and I found that Mia had the same troubles on the second part-basically falling all the way down. It was slushy the last day, I got yelled at by some French guy for going thru the ski school line, I understood his French perfectly but responded angrily in English that I was in the ski school and he looked at me uncomprehendingly muttering something derogatory in a very French way to his companion. It seemed to me that few people there speak English. They are country locals. But it didn't matter that the last afternoon had a few ups and downs. The place is great. The ski instructors are exceptional and I learned a great deal of the science of the snow, the need for water for making snow if necessary, and the limited time window for grooming correctly at night with the different temperatures to achieve optimum results. It was very interesting. Although we were told we came at the wrong time-it was winter vacation for European school children was that week
Mihai and Lunch on the Terrace at L'Antares!
. All the children in Meribel ski, of course and there were classes all over with little itty bitty kids starting at 4 years old. Still, the slopes were relatively empty and a joy.Our classes were about 7-8 people in the morning and afternoon made up of Russians, South Africans, English kids and us. We didn't meet any Americans during our entire time there. Lots of wealthy Russians and Valerie said in five years there would be many Chinese. I got the feeling that they'd like to see more Americans, and most were very polite and inquired about American life, especially politics. At the time of the trip, Hillary Clinton, Obama were into the democratic primaries and everyone over there was concerned and interested.
Club Med Antares was wonderful and the accommodations were really great. The kids got to try duck and lapin (rabbit) for the first time, and they loved it. They don't often prepare those dishes well in my neck of the woods in the US. The food spread at Antares was phenomenal. It was warm enough that we had lunch outside on the deck every day. If you're American, take more time than usual to sit and enjoy the food and whomever you are with. The staff was fabulous. We could ski right up to the hotel and on some days, there would be little table set up with h'ors devours, wine, beer juice and soda to greet us as we left the slopes before lunch. One day, on my way to the afternoon skiing, they made me try a local liquor on a sugar cube. They just fed it too me because my arms were full of ski gear. I wish I could remember what it was, but it was yummy. It was our first Club Med experience, the staff rotates to other Club Med locations every 6 months, and they become your best friends while you are there
Moi
. Not at all like other 3-5 star hotels in Europe.For reference, there are a number of webcams in Les Trois Vallees. http://www.meribel.net/webcams.asp?saison=20081&langue=en
If you want info on the French ski school that offer not only lessons but off piste skiing and guides you need this brochure: http://www.esf-meribel.com/english.php Remember, Alan wants you to make your reservations for lessons, guides or whatever well in advance. Here is the main link for Les Trois Vallees: http://www.les3vallees.com/ There is some kind of interactive 3D guide so you can go and look around at the area. Definitely put Meribel on your list of places to visit. Best vacation Ever! I shall return!
