Day one – Skiing Les Houches
The weather in Les Houches is unbelievable.
When we arrived last night the air temperature was around -12 centigrade. Overnight it dropped to -16.
Breakfast was served at 8:30 am (porridge, croissants, tea and fruit juice) and we then had a cold walk (about 300 meters) to the town tourism office (it is on the main street near the Shopi supermarket) where we bought a Mt Blanc pass for 6 days skiing (216 euros).
The view from Les Houches looking up the Chamonix Valley
The tourism office offered two type of ‘multi-pass’ one is the Mt Blanc pass and covers skiing in the valley and some surrounding resorts, the other is the Cham Ski and covers skiing in the valley. We were also offered ‘mountain rescue’ insurance. The pass does not need a photo and is of the electronic type (I think there was a charge of 3 euros for the card).
The view from Les Houches looking up the Chamonix Valley
From the tourism office we walked back past our chalet towards the lifts. On the way I stopped to hire skis at InterSport just before the main lift. The shop had a very good selection of ski. I hired a pair of Rossenols for 15 euros per day.
There was a rather long queue at the main lift in Les Houches so we decided to avoid it by taking a set of stairs to the bottom of the “Coupe du Monde” chair, followed by “Maisonneuve” and finally “Kandahar” which effectively got us to the top of Les Houches at 1900m. We spent the morning skiing run back down to the bottom of “Maisonneuve” before stopping for lunch near the top.
Skiing conditions were very good with a lot of interesting and challenging runs.
The afternoon was spent doing pretty much the same.
Les Houches is not a large ski area and it would be easy to get bored after a couple of days, however, it does have some great runs and is a lot of fun, plus it is very convenient if you are staying in Les Houches!
Les Houches, France – map it
