Like Chamonix, but in Italy: the other side of the same mountain

Courmayeur sits under Mont Blanc on the Italian side, with Chamonix through the tunnel. It is a mountaineering town first, with a guiding culture to match, and the Skyway cable car climbs to Punta Helbronner for guided glacier descents on the same ice Chamonix skiers know. We class it as expert, the only one of the three picks we do.

The piste has bite. Thirty-two percent is steeper than one in four, against Chamonix's 39. The reds average 24.3 percent, the steepest of the 10 Italian resorts we cover, and the blacks 36.4, the fourth steepest of the 55 and well above Chamonix's 28.5. It is snow sure on our measure, with 72 percent of the piste we measure above 1,800 metres, up to 2,715. The town sits 189 metres higher than Chamonix, a chic stone place built around the Via Roma and the long lunch.

The trade is size. We measure 42 kilometres of piste, the least of the 55 resorts we cover. The figure you will see quoted is 100 kilometres, but the resort's own wording says that covers groomed slopes and off piste. The pisted figure, measured by skiresort.com, is 41.5. Marked itinerary is 3.3 kilometres, so the off piste here means a guide, and the skiing tops out 507 metres below Chamonix's. Evenings are an aperitivo and a good dinner rather than a late bar crawl, though a few places keep going in peak weeks.

On the piste alone, Livigno is the pick that matches Chamonix's steepness. Forty percent of its piste is steeper than one in four, a point more than Chamonix and the fifth biggest share of the 55 resorts we cover. The blues average 17.8 percent, the joint fourth steepest of the 55 and steeper than Chamonix's 16.5, and the blacks 33.2. The reds are kinder, 23.1 against 27.0.

It also keeps Chamonix's long season, from late November into May, and adds height Chamonix cannot. The village sits at 1,816 metres, 781 above Chamonix, and every metre of the piste we measure is above 1,800 metres, as big a share as any of the 55. That makes it snow sure on our measure, up to 2,767 metres. Our read is high and lively, a duty free resort with a night out in it, and its skiing is two sectors facing each other across the valley with no lift between them, which a Chamonix skier used to buses will shrug at.

What you give up is the serious side. We do not class Livigno as expert, and we have no marked off piste itinerary for it at all. There are 81 kilometres of piste and 8.9 of black. It is a week of steep, snowy laps, not big mountain days.

If the part of Chamonix you love is the town, Cortina is Italy's answer. It is a real, historic town rather than a resort, stylish and scenic by our read, with a pedestrian main street, an Olympic past from 1956 and the 2026 Games behind it. Like Chamonix, its ski areas are separate and joined by bus rather than lift. Its skiing goes high: the top of the skiing reaches 3,028 metres by our measure, the second highest of the 10 Italian resorts we cover and only 194 below Chamonix, though that is a lift top above the highest piste we measure, at 2,724 metres. It has 9.2 kilometres of marked itinerary, also second of the Italian resorts we cover, and we measure 85.5 kilometres of piste. It is snow sure on our measure, with 67 percent of the piste we measure above 1,800 metres.

The trade is the steep. Only 25 percent of the piste is steeper than one in four, against 39, and the reds average 21.9 percent against 27.0. The blacks average 32.5, steeper than Chamonix's, but there are 9.1 kilometres of them. We class Cortina as upmarket rather than expert. It is a Chamonix week for a couple who love a mountain town and ski well, not for a group chasing couloirs.