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Pizza, prosecco & powder in Courmayeur

Skiing on the other side of Mont Blanc

featured in Snow report Author Alison Shayler, Chamonix Reporter Updated

The dismal weather that started the week in Chamonix left us in need of some cheering up, and Courmayeur over in Italy always delivers with it's wide sunny pistes and excellent restaurants - it even gave us a tiny taste of fresh snow when we visited yesterday!

Courmayeur is angled in such a way that the sun moves from one side of the mountain over to the other as the day wears on; if you start on the Dolonne side you’ll get the morning sun and then as the shadows start getting long, make your way over to the Val Veny side to catch the last rays.

a piste in courmayeur italy

We parked up at Val Veny and headed straight up the Zerotta chairlift and over Col Checrouit for a few laps of the Dolonne. This long wide piste gets a lot of traffic and can often be icy but yesterday it was in perfect condition and so quiet that there were even a few strips of untouched corduroy and a some patches of fresh powder off the sides. The pistes that were still in the shade were pretty bulletproof but the warm sunshine on this side of the mountain had softened the surface slightly, giving it a nice bit of bounce.

One of our favourite things about Courmayeur is lunch time. There are so many good restaurants to choose from and on a sunny day you can’t go wrong with pizza and prosecco on the terrace of La Maison Vieille. Service is usually a bit chaotic (I don’t think I’ve ever eaten here and they’ve got everyone’s order right) but the staff are lovely, the food is great and the location is excellent.

three women in deckchairs

The pistes in Courmayeur are really well linked, so you can get some nice long runs in without having to spend too long sat on lifts. After lunch we decided that the Val Veny side would have softened up a bit by now, so we skied back over the Col de Checrouit and towards the Plan de la Gabba. We should have headed there sooner because we found that the Gabba had not been pisted and if we’d gone there in the morning we would have got fresh tracks! Anyway, it was still good fun and there was plenty of light powdery snow to play around in.

It was such a difference to a few weeks ago when Courmayeur was crowded and icy with bare patches showing through the snow; the rain that has been falling down in Chamonix this week has settled as fresh snow on the mountains. Courmayeur is such a family-friendly resort that the periods in between school holidays are usually really quiet, which not only means that the pistes aren’t so busy but also that the snow is in better conditions for not taking such a daily hammering.

a wide empty piste in courmayeur

If you've bought the Mont Blanc Unlimited lift pass, then Courmayeur is included and you even get a discount on the Mont Blanc tunnel toll. You need to validate your pass at the ticket desk in either Val Veny or Dolonne before you go up the mountain. It also includes the Skyway Monte Bianco, so make sure you leave enough time to take a ride on the rotating cable car up to Punta Helbronner at 3466m!

The lovely sunshine of the last two days looks set to come to an end soon, with clouds and precipitation moving in over the weekend - meaning that there could be more snow on the way! Here’s hoping that February brings plenty of the white stuff with it...

Stats

Snow Report
  • Total Pistes: 31

Location

Map of the surrounding area