There’s been a bit of a ski media storm recently about the size of ski areas claimed by resorts. A German cartographer and journalist, Christoph Schrahe, has used modern satellite mapping to check the true size of ski areas, compared with their marketing claims. In most cases they didn’t stack up, and the Portes du Soleil (translation: doors of the sun), which is one of several that claims to be the world’s largest, with its supposed 650km of piste, was one of those found to be exaggerating their figures by Mr Schrahe.
Yet I have skied there half a dozen times over the past 25 years, and even when making a fortnight-long stay, I have never felt I have even begun to get my head around just how vast a ski domain this is.
Set off from any one of the dozen ski resorts that make up the Portes du Soleil, which straddles the French-Swiss border, and you can ski on all day from resort to resort, and still not reach all of the extremities before you need to turn back in order to make all the necessary lift connections.
You don’t have to be a great skier or boarder to make these long treks either, much can be accomplished on easy green and blue runs if you wish, more challenging options are available if you prefer; and the growing number of comfy high-speed chairlifts, gondolas and funitels make the uphill less taxing than it once was too.
It just makes me realise that however worked up ski statisticians may get, once a ski area has reached a certain critical mass in terms of size, where you can’t physically ski it all during your average ski week, does size really matter?
That’s not to say accurate, standardised measurements wouldn’t be a great thing, just that when we look at the big numbers it would be good if we could have some concept of what they mean in terms of what we can physically ski.
Whatever your personal belief on ski area measurements, the practical realities of the sheer scale of the Portes du Soleil (whatever that might truly be) are fairly breathtaking, and result in one of my favourite things about the region – the chance to go on a daily ”ski safari” from one resort to the next, often switching from the Eurozone to the Swiss land of cheese and chocolate during the same day (actually the cheese is pretty good on the French side too), without needing to hike or take a bus.
Some of these excursions can be fairly epic, and an early start after advanced planning is advisable to ensure you get all the way there and back in the same day.
There are many variants, but the locals reckon that the longest trip possible starts on the far side of Les Gets on Mont Chery, from where you ski over to Morzine, then onto Avoriaz and into Switzerland, passing the villages of Les Crosets and Champéry via the Grand Paradis pistes (some of the best skiing of the day on a glorious 7km descent). Then on via Champoussin and Morgins and back into France at Super Châtel, and finally onto La Chapelle d’Abondance, the ninth resort on your itinerary.
“Unfortunately you have to take off your skis a couple of times and walk for 5 minutes to make connections in a few places (although there are buses if you prefer). It takes all day, so you need to leave with the first lift at 8.45am. And if you want to make the connection back, you have to take a sandwich as you won’t have time to stop for lunch!” says Cosima Page who promotes the region.
There’s a great choice of villages in which to base yourself too. Unusually for France however, there is only one purpose-built altitude resort, and that manages to look very stylish thanks to its wood-clad facades and nonconformist , rather than rectangular, architectural design.
On the Swiss side the main resort is historic Champéry, easy to reach by rail from Geneva airport, and on the French side there are large traditional resorts like Morzine, Châtel and Les Gets, each famous in its own right, the latter with a particular niche as a family-friendly destination.
But there’s also unique Avoriaz, that sole purpose-built resort, which lies 1800m up at the heart of the Portes du Soleil and has been one of the world’s truly remarkable ski resorts ever since it opened more than 40 years ago. The only car-free resort in France, it has grown from a rather desolate destination to a vibrant resort that, with the absence of traffic and snow not streets between buildings, has something of the feel of a moon base – but one with gourmet restaurants, lively bars, and, after a €200m spend (£168m), new attractions too.
These include Aquariaz – a remarkable indoor tropical swimming dome complex added last winter in the heart of the resort – as well as state-of-the-art lifts and whole new districts, most notably the 5« Amara development, which brings a whole new luxury feel to the resort too, complete with its gourmet restaurants and spa.
So, however many kilometres of piste there may be, for resort choice, for ambience, and for having more ski runs than you can possibly cope with, the Portes du Soleil is hard to beat.