La Rosière's new Mont Valaisan area makes the French ski resort even easier to fall in love with
With Italian influences, a laid-back vibe and access to five new runs and extensive off-piste, La Rosière is a near-perfect ski destination, says Mary Novakovich
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Your support makes all the difference.You have to be an optimist if you’re in the ski industry, especially these days. But it’s hard to beat putting a planned ski area on your piste map nearly 60 years before it’s actually built.
While things can move at breakneck speeds on the slopes, behind the scenes it’s a bit slower, as La Rosière well knows.
This intimate resort hard up against the French-Italian border already has so much going for it. Sun-facing slopes, views of Mont Blanc, a friendly, chilled-out atmosphere and the great geographical luck to share its ski area, Espace San Bernardo, with Italian neighbour La Thuile. The combination is irresistible. Just think of the food.
But the opening of the Mont Valaisan sector this winter has given it a fresh boost – and a new highest peak of 2,800m.
Advanced skiers who might have thought La Rosière didn’t offer enough challenges have a whole new playground to explore. It’s not just the five new red runs – pretty much the resort’s toughest – that make up the bowl-shaped sector. Thanks to two new six-seater chairlifts, you can now access an enormous amount of freeride terrain that previously was a tedious schlep to reach.
Under dazzling blue skies, I started from Les Eucherts, the hamlet that’s connected to the main village via a magical path – instantly nicknamed the Narnia Trail – through snowy forest. I had quiet corduroy pistes up and across to Fort de la Redoute at 2,390m, where a panoramic walkway dangled over the abyss and gave me gorgeous views of Mont Blanc and Italy.
Cruising down the new Blaireau and Bouleaux reds to pick up the Moulins chairlift, I followed it with a stint on the Mont Valaisan lift – 32 seats of which carry the names of competition winners who now have their own bit of immortality. At the 2,800m Mont Valaisan peak, off-piste skiers were checking their transceivers at the tracking post before entering the freeride terrain. A sensible idea, considering the threat of avalanches in off-piste areas.
After filling up with views of Mont Blanc, I headed down the serpentine 2800 run, which got narrower and steeper as it merged with Combe and Galinette. No motorway runs here – the resort had to follow the natural shape of the mountain. Perhaps it was the novelty factor, but these slopes were the busiest I’d seen so far, relatively speaking. In spite of that, the sense of space, of being in the midst of a vast white expanse, was uplifting.
Lunch at L’Antigel on Tétras piste on the way back to the village put me in the mood for the following day’s jaunt into Italy. A gratin of ravioli combining a cep cream with reblochon cheese was a heavenly marriage of two cuisines. But a pure taste of Italy awaited on the other side of Fort de la Redoute in the Aosta Valley.
A narrow red run led to the seemingly endless drag lift that finished with the welcome sight of the Italian border sign. I skied down to the Col du Petit Saint Bernard – in summer a road through the mountain pass, but in winter a snowy spot for hot chocolate at Bar du Lac and the chance to swap languages.
Uncrowded pistes, mostly lovely wide reds, took me to the mountain restaurant Maison Carrel, which, despite its French name, was firmly Italian. As I dithered between gnocchi with fennel-infused sausage and ravioli with mocetta salami, cheese and walnuts, the kind waiter took pity on me and gave me a half-portion of each. Coffee and grappa on the terrace in view of the glacier, under clear blue skies, plus more empty pistes after lunch – all added up to sheer joy. Even the drag lifts didn’t spoil the mood, and there are plans to convert those to chairlifts in the next few years.
When heavy snow arrived the following day and smothered the pistes in impenetrable fog, I gave the skiing a miss (having tried and failed to see beyond a few metres ahead of me). Time for a slow exploration of the village – a stroll along the Narnia Trail, a shopping spree in the cheese co-operative, a long soak in the spa of my residence, the very smart Cîmes Blanches. In fact, there was a general air of well-to-do-ness in both the main village and Les Eucherts, helped by new openings such as Hyatt Centric – the first in a French ski resort – and the four-star Hotel Alparena.
Le Flocon in Les Eucherts swiftly became a favourite place for cheese fondues, tartiflettes and pizzas that gave their Italian neighbours a run for their money. But the best fondue took a bit of effort to reach. I met Stéphane, one of Ecole du Ski Français’s mountain experts, for a moonlight snowshoe walk through the deserted woods above Les Eucherts, following tracks made by ptarmigans and hares.
After an hour in this ghostly wilderness, we arrived at Igloo Village, a new restaurant in the form of – you guessed it – an igloo at the foot of the Plan du Repos chairlift. Surrounded by ice sculptures carved into the walls, I devoured a cheese fondue that was one of the best I’d ever tasted. As if La Rosière didn’t have enough to make me fall in love with it.
Travel essentials
Mary Novakovich travelled with Peak Retreats, which offers seven nights’ self-catering in a two-bedroom apartment in Les Cîmes Blanches from £264pp, based on five sharing, including Eurotunnel crossing.
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