I didn’t get to go skiing last year and Negin was gracious enough to organise this year’s trip to Morzine, which sat pretty much on the other side of the mountain from our last trip to Les Get.

Like last time, twelve of us shared a common chalet. I think this year’s one definitely takes the award at being the best ski accommodation of them all. I think it’s also probably set very high expectations for future events. Not only was the building very new, but the wonderful hosts from Mountain Spaces had thought of a lot.

For example, the chalet came equipped with six walkie talkies that we could distribute amongst the group and use on the mountain. Though they didn’t work across mountain ranges, these were quite fun to use and we did use it a fair bit trying to co-ordinate when to meet up for lunch or at the end of the day.

Chalet Le Milan Noir didn’t stop there as well. The place came equipped with a new, modern hot tub, an indoor sauna and the entrance to the lodge had boot warmers, ski hooks to hold the gear and a separate place to hang your ski jackets from the rest of your stuff.

We were definitely spoilt with fresh cakes in the afternoon when we arrived, an amazing breakfast spread (although no nutella) of cereals, croissants, juices, fresh coffee/tea and an egg of the day not to mention an aperitif/snack before the daily three course meal ending with a cheese course and unlimited bottles of wine during dinner. The wine was actually really great as well with two choices of red and white every night.

Like last time, we had really good luck with the skiing conditions. It snowed pretty much every day resulting in a heavy, thick layer of powder – perfect to soften those black runs and make off-piste look even more appealing than the piste. The snow did have side-effects of removing a lot of the visibility but we did end up with two of the six days of skiing super fresh powder and amazingly clear snow.

Some of the highlights of the skiing part were definitely heading over to Mont Chery and heading over to Chatel. Mont Chery has only a handful of runs – mostly reds and blacks but this means that it was less busy than many of the other slopes and a great place to push yourself when covered with thick amounts of powder. Our trip to Chatel was also a fantastic day where we headed out early and came back on one of the last slopes having skiing as much as we could.

With great company and great facilities at home, we only headed into town a couple of nights but it was definitely a bigger city than what I remember Les Get being.

A few of us had to try the raclette again (some of us had it twice during the week!) although I’m convinced that we didn’t do enough skiing to really work off all the wonderful food and drink that we indulged in for the week. But, it was a holiday after all.

A really great week of skiing and one that I definitely won’t forget for some time.

A few weeks ago I ended up in Les Gets where fourteen of us ended up in a nice little chalet to enjoy the snow. Many of us were concerned the skiing wouldn’t be so good given the little snowfall around Europe however someone must have smiled upon us with a long fresh snowfall the day we arrived. It lasted for the good week and provided us excellent conditions.

One of the nicest parts of European based skiing is the on slope facilities including lovely restaurants with outdoor BBQs and French food for lunch. We ate well. Almost far too well on the slopes. Here’s a picture of a few of us at lunch where we managed to hoard a table for almost the entire fourteen of us.

Although the snow was good, we did have quite a few days of fairly cloudy days. It’s kind of surreal plowing through a cloud bank and trying to find your way down. I found out brightly coloured ski gear really helps!

Below is a picture of the chalet that we stayed at. We went through a good company who organised all of our transfers, ski hire and ski passes and had half board (breakfast and dinner) meals prepared by a really friendly Welsh couple. It was three course meals almost every night (except for the one where we ate out) and carafes of wine that went down a treat with everyone after a hard day’s slope. The best part was the heated outdoor jacuzzi where we could unwind and relax our tired muscles from the day’s activities.

I said we had a lot of snow. At least we got some pretty nice views.

One evening we went out to a nice restaurant that focused on regional cuisine. Our group ate loads of cheese, both in the form of a mushroom fondue, but also this swiss style, melting cheese raclette.

And after!

The new goggles went down a treat and worked out really well considering we had plenty of sunshine all the time we were there.

Les Gets has some awesome runs and its pistes are connected with eleven other ski resorts. We tried at least eight of them out, even making our away through three of them to get “across the border” into Switzerland. Here’s the proof:

Jo and Nathan beaming after the crossing.

Our ski host took us out one day skiing. This turned into a really great day run despite some of the cloudy conditions including some really good runs. We managed to find this again, crossing through Avoriaz, Portes Du Soleil, Morzine, to finally get to Châtel. This long red run was definitely one of our favourites, and a good thing that our guide showed us it. We didn’t know the name of it, but it’s one of the longest continuous runs that has some very decent speeds. For the record, the run is Le Linga.

A tiring and extremely satisfying ski holiday. It really shouldn’t be that long since the next one. It was great to be in a mixed group of skills. A number of people came up to speed really fast, and most people got away with out any injuries.