A review of Montgenevre

You can ski this resort in a day, you could probably do it in half a day but the lifts are not fast enough to get you around the mountain quickly enough. If the snow was fantastic you could spend another few days in the backcountry and use the connecting resorts of Claviere, Sestriere and Saux d'oux in Italy, but as the snow season has been pretty poor in this part of the Alps, those resorts were in terrible condition. In fact it was on a sortie to Claviere that the Viking and I had our most wipe outs in one day and I spilt blood on Italian snow! Funnily enough...or not depending on how you look at it, but drip just the smallest amount of blood on snow and it looks like lorry has hit a deer.

The best skiing was to be found at the back of MG at Chalvet (2680m) and Col de Alpet (2430) where there was still some steep runs with deep snow and quite fun in the afternoon sun. The main drawback to the whole resort were the lifts, very slow and quite old and in need of a definite upgrade. This is a weekend resort and I would NOT return here for a full week again.

However our hotel was great value and right on the piste – Hotel Apiscottia http://www.alpiscottia.com/ and run by lovely French lady who took a fancy to the Vikings legs when he sneakily decided to get an early morning coffee in his boxers, before the other guests were up.

The highlight of the week was meeting up with our extreme skier friend Jim, who was staying in Serre Chevalier for the week with his family. We spent a day with him, and the resort (more of a ski area/valley) is fantastic, which I will definitely return to in the future – it is huge, a whole array of linked villages and runs at all levels, as well as lots of backcountry off piste, which Nathan and I discovered as soon as Jim dragged us off the top lift station. We have had experience of following Jim blindly off cliffs and couloirs in the past and with 2 of us snowboarding we are able to find the courage to say NO to him and find a safer way round the runs he chose for us. In the past if I had been alone, I would have just followed him anywhere and would have either split my skull or have ruined my snowboard on the rocks.

Cervinia next!