Love Val d'Isère? Where to go next for the steep, the nights or the altitude
The Ski Snug teamUpdated 12 October 20265 min read
Val d'Isère is a high altitude classic that skis big and stays up late. The village sits at 1,850 metres and feels like somewhere that grew rather than was built, the lifts it shares with Tignes reach 3,456 metres, and Espace Killy is 300 kilometres. It has the steep, it has the off piste, and it has the evenings. People who love it tend to love all three.
Which makes replacing it hard, because almost nowhere does all three at once. So when Val d'Isère regulars want somewhere new, the honest answer is a question: which of them would you miss most?
First, Val d'Isère measured
The surprise is next door. Val d'Isère is the harder half of Espace Killy. On the same lift pass, 25 percent of Tignes's piste is steeper than one in four, and it has 14 kilometres of marked itinerary. Val d'Isère has 29 percent, and twice the itinerary at 29 kilometres. People talk about the two as one mountain. For a strong skier, the reputation is earned on this side.
And it tells you where to look. Only four resorts we cover have more marked itinerary than Val d'Isère, and every one of them has a lower village. More off piste than this means coming down the mountain to get it.
St Anton: if it is the steep and the off piste
- VillageVillage
- 1,304 m
- Highest liftTop lift
- 2,811 m
St. Anton: 155 km of piste we measure. 66 km blue and easier 42%65 km red 42%24 km black 15%
Plus 70 km of marked off piste itinerary, kept out of the piste total.
If you go to Val d'Isère for the hard skiing, go to the Arlberg. St Anton has 70 kilometres of marked itinerary, more than any other resort we cover and well over twice Val d'Isère's 29. And 43 percent of its piste is steeper than one in four, against your 29. Only Argentière measures steeper. Austrian grades are not set the way French ones are, so that share is the honest comparison, not the colour on the map. It is built from average gradient, and a run's grade is set by its steepest pitch, but across a border it is the best ruler there is.
It keeps the evenings too. St Anton is energetic and social, with a nightlife that a Val d'Isère regular will recognise, and a snow record to go with it.
The trade is altitude. The village is at 1,304 metres, more than 500 below Val d'Isère's, and the lifts top out at 2,811 against Espace Killy's 3,456. You also give up some of the polish, because St Anton is lively rather than smart. We measure 155 kilometres of piste around the village. The size of the Arlberg as a whole is not yet classified in our data, so we leave it there.
Verbier: if it is the big mountain and the scene
- VillageVillage
- 1,500 m
- Highest liftTop lift
- 3,330 m
Verbier: 97 km of piste we measure. 39 km blue and easier 40%48 km red 49%11 km black 11%
Plus 26 km of marked off piste itinerary, kept out of the piste total.
Verbier is the Swiss version of Val d'Isère's reputation: big mountain terrain and a famous social scene, in a cosmopolitan village with lifts to 3,330 metres. It has 26 kilometres of marked itinerary, close to Val d'Isère's 29, and the nights are as lively as yours.
The trade is the piste. We measure about 97 kilometres on Verbier's own domain, well short of the 158 around Val d'Isère and a long way short of Espace Killy. The 410 kilometres you will see quoted is a pass figure for the Four Valleys, not a measure of Verbier's skiing. And the village is at 1,500 metres, 350 below yours.
And the pistes themselves are gentler than the name suggests. Only 19 percent of Verbier's piste is steeper than one in four, against 29 at Val d'Isère, and 48 percent is gentler than 15 percent, a share no resort we cover beats. The steep at Verbier is off the piste. If that is where you ski anyway, it barely matters. If you spend your week on the black pistes, you will notice by Wednesday.
Zermatt: if it is the altitude, with polish
- VillageVillage
- 1,620 m
- Highest liftTop lift
- 3,899 m
- Linked areaLinked
- 322 km
Zermatt: 151 km of piste we measure. 33 km blue and easier 22%107 km red 71%11 km black 8%
Plus 23 km of marked off piste itinerary, kept out of the piste total.
Zermatt is the upmarket answer, and the high one. Its lifts reach almost 3,900 metres with glacier skiing all year, and the village is car free and smart. Linked over the top to Cervinia, the area measures 322 kilometres, a little more than Espace Killy. The 360 you will see quoted is the marketed figure, and the Italian side needs the International pass. It has 23 kilometres of marked itinerary, which is where its serious skiing lives.
What it does not have is Val d'Isère's steep pistes. By our measurement only 12 percent of Zermatt's piste is steeper than one in four, the lowest of the 55 resorts we cover, against 29 at Val d'Isère. Its reds average 17.2 percent, about the same as a Val d'Isère blue at 16.9. Average gradient is only a guide, but that gap is not subtle. The evenings are quieter too, and the village sits at 1,620 metres, 230 below yours. The height is all at the top.
If you ski the itineraries and the off piste and you love Val d'Isère's polish, Zermatt is a wonderful change. If you love its black pistes and its late nights, it is the wrong one.
So, which one
you go for the steep and the off piste, and you want the evenings to match.
it is the scene and the big mountain you love, and you ski off the piste more than on it.
you want the altitude and the polish, and you can live with gentler pistes and quieter nights.
It keeps the hard skiing and the nights, the two things Val d'Isère does that are hardest to find anywhere else, and asks you to give up altitude for them.