Used to Italy? The French ski resorts that go bigger and higher
The Ski Snug teamUpdated 12 October 20267 min read
We always go to Italy. Cortina, Alta Badia, Madonna di Campiglio, Courmayeur, once or twice Cervinia. We love the sun on the terrace and a lunch that takes most of the afternoon. This year we want more mountain: a bigger ski area and a higher village, so we are not watching the forecast all January. France, then. But not at the cost of everything we go to Italy for.
If that is you, the short answer is Val d'Isère. It goes bigger and higher without giving up a proper village: a village at 1,850 metres, lifts to 3,456 and 300 kilometres of linked skiing in Espace Killy, with an upmarket streak a Cortina or Courmayeur regular will recognise. For the food and an old village, look at Saint-Martin-de-Belleville. For the sunshine, Serre Chevalier.
Your resorts, and the French ones that go further
Your Italian resorts are the yardstick, not options. The French picks are in bold.
| Resort | Village | Highest lift | Ski area | Piste steeper than 1 in 4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cortina d'Ampezzo | 1,224 m | 2,939 m | 86 km, measured around the town | 25% |
| Alta Badia | 1,568 m | 2,778 m | About 500 km via the Sellaronda | 15% |
| Madonna di Campiglio | 1,550 m | 2,580 m | 155 km, all linked | 18% |
| Courmayeur | 1,224 m | 2,755 m | About 42 km of piste, measured | 32% |
| Cervinia | 2,050 m | 3,480 m in Italy | 322 km with Zermatt | 15% |
| Val d'Isère | 1,850 m | 3,456 m, on the Tignes side | 300 km, Espace Killy | 29% |
| Saint-Martin-de-Belleville | 1,450 m | Shares the Three Valleys lifts | 600 km, the Three Valleys | 20% |
| Serre Chevalier | 1,350 m | 2,830 m | 153 km, measured | 27% |
The last column is measured from the runs themselves. More on why it matters below.
In France, high and big usually means built for skiing
France's highest resorts were mostly built for the lifts. Tignes, Val Thorens and La Plagne are very good at what they do: you ski from the door, first lift to last. That is a different idea of a holiday from a long lunch in the sun.
The old villages, meanwhile, are low. Of the seven French resorts we would call traditional, six sit at 1,200 metres or below. The exception is Saint-Martin-de-Belleville, at 1,450. And if it is the style of Cortina or Courmayeur you would miss, France has three resorts we would call upmarket: Megève, which sits at 1,113 metres, Courchevel at 1,747 and Val d'Isère at 1,850.
So the useful question is not which French resort is best. It is which of the few that are high, big and still feel like somewhere suits you.
Val d'Isère: bigger, higher, and still a village
- VillageVillage
- 1,850 m
- Highest liftTop lift
- 3,456 m
- Linked areaLinked
- 300 km
Val d'Isère: 158 km of piste we measure. 90 km green and blue 57%46 km red 29%22 km black 14%
Plus 29 km of marked off piste itinerary, kept out of the piste total.
Val d'Isère's village sits at 1,850 metres, roughly 300 to 600 metres above Cortina, Alta Badia, Madonna and Courmayeur, and its lifts reach 3,456, more than 500 metres above the top at Cortina. Espace Killy, shared with Tignes, is 300 kilometres of genuinely linked skiing, nearly twice Madonna's 155. The season runs from late November to early May.
And it feels like somewhere. There are trees, a church that predates the ski industry and a main street that curves, an upmarket side that will feel familiar, and livelier evenings than most of Italy.
The catch is that the skiing gets steeper. Twenty nine percent of Val d'Isère's piste is steeper than one in four, against 15 percent at Alta Badia and 18 at Madonna, and there are 29 kilometres of marked off piste itinerary. Its reds average a 23.9 percent gradient, against 21.9 at Cortina and 19.7 at Madonna. For a confident skier that is the appeal. For a careful one, start the week on the blues.
Tignes is the same lift pass from a different village, higher at 2,100 metres and built for skiing. Choose it only if altitude matters more to you than the village.
Saint-Martin-de-Belleville: the long lunch, with the Three Valleys above it
- VillageVillage
- 1,450 m
- Linked areaLinked
- 600 km quoted
Saint-Martin-de-Belleville: 75 km of piste we measure. 50 km green and blue 67%19 km red 25%6 km black 8%
Saint-Martin is an old Savoyard village inside the Three Valleys, and it is the nearest France comes to the thing you go to Italy for. It is quiet, it is about food, and the skiing above it is enormous.
The Three Valleys is widely quoted at 600 kilometres and it is genuinely linked by lift, though we have not measured the whole area ourselves. On the Saint-Martin side alone we measure 75 kilometres. The rest is reachable on skis, all the way up to Val Thorens, whose village sits at 2,300 metres and whose lifts reach 3,230. That is where the height is here, because the village itself, at 1,450 metres, is higher than Cortina and Courmayeur but a little lower than Alta Badia and Madonna. For an Alta Badia regular, it is the one pick here that is bigger than the Sellaronda, on the quoted figure.
It is also the gentlest of the French picks, which will matter to anyone who skis Italy partly because it is kind. Twenty percent of the piste here is steeper than one in four, close to Madonna's 18, and its reds average 21.9 percent, exactly the same as Cortina's.
The evenings are quiet: a good dinner, then bed. If half your group wants a night out, Val Thorens, which we would call lively, is at the top of the same valley.
If it is Cortina's glamour rather than an old village you are after, Courchevel is on the same lift pass: a 1,747 metre village, glossy and upmarket, where gourmet dining is a large part of the point. Its reds average 24.0 percent, so expect it to ski more like France than Saint-Martin does. Either way, the 600 kilometres are the same.
Serre Chevalier: if it is the sunshine
- VillageVillage
- 1,350 m
- Highest liftTop lift
- 2,830 m
Serre Chevalier: 153 km of piste we measure. 91 km green and blue 60%45 km red 29%17 km black 11%
Serre Chevalier is sun, trees and a string of old villages in the southern French Alps, relaxed rather than glossy. By our matching it is the closest French resort to both Cortina and Alta Badia.
It is the smallest step up on this list. The village sits at 1,350 metres, 126 metres higher than Cortina's and Courmayeur's, and we measure 153 kilometres of piste: more than three times Courmayeur's and nearly 70 kilometres more than around Cortina. But the top, at 2,830 metres, is lower than Cortina's. Choose it for the feel, not the figures, and for the trees on a bad weather day.
Do not mistake relaxed for gentle. Its reds average 24.9 percent, steeper than the reds at any of the five Italian resorts on the table.
Yes, the reds are steeper here
Grading is set resort by resort, and conventions differ between countries. So we measured the runs themselves, from the gradient of every piste we hold:
| Average gradient | Blue | Red | Black |
|---|---|---|---|
| Italy | 14.4% | 20.4% | 30.2% |
| France | 16.2% | 24.3% | 29.6% |
A French red averages 24.3 percent, almost four points steeper than the Italian average. Blues are closer, and blacks are level: the average Italian black is, if anything, fractionally steeper. The gap is in the reds, which is where most of us spend the week. A French blue is gentler, on average, than the Italian reds you know.
Madonna's reds, at 19.7, and Cervinia's, at 18.1, are gentler than the reds at every one of the 17 French resorts we cover. Courmayeur regulars will feel at home: its reds average 24.3, exactly the French figure.
Two honest caveats. This is average gradient, and a run's grade is set by its steepest pitch. And it is measured from terrain elevation data, which is good but not survey grade. In France, check the resort before you trust the colour.
Who should ignore all of this
Alta Badia regulars who go for the kilometres.
The roughly 500 you reach on the Sellaronda beats Espace Killy. Only the Three Valleys and the Portes du Soleil are quoted bigger, and the Three Valleys figure is one we have not checked ourselves. Not one French resort we cover measures as gentle as Alta Badia, either: the gentlest, Samoëns, has 19 percent of its piste steeper than one in four, against Alta Badia's 15.
So, which one
you want bigger and higher in one go, a village with a life of its own, and you are happy to ski steeper reds.
the lunch is the point, you want the Three Valleys above you and a quiet evening below.
Courchevel if you want the same skiing with the glamour turned up.
the sunshine and the old villages matter more than the altitude, and you would rather trade a little height for a relaxed week.
It asks you to give up the least: the height, the size and a village worth walking round in the evening, all at once.