Cervinia and Courmayer

A couple of Italian resorts I am considering for next season, mainly because they are high and have god ski areas connected.

Anyone got any comments on either resort, positive or negative?

Much appreciated.

Hi Tony

Went to Courmayer a number of years ago on only my second ski trip. It is a beautiful village - very chic in a classic Italian way, with great Italian food, etc available (and more fur than I have ever seen in my life - lots of wealthy Italians from Milan)!!! However, in my view, there are two major downsides:

1. the skiing is not extensive - my memory was that there were only about 21 runs in total (the Crystal rep used to run a "Ski the entire resort in one day" guiding tour). So, unless they have expanded in the meantime, be prepared to repeat the runs regularly.

2. the village is on the other side of the mountain from the skiing - you have a take a cable car across the valley in the morning to get across to the base of the mountain. The queues for this can be quite long, particularly at weekends.

Hope that is some use.

Had good times in both but would pick Courmayeur of the two.

Cervinia

Generally excellent snow cover (because of the altitude) but can suffer from the wind (altitude!). A good skier might be looking for more excitement after a couple of days as the ski area is not the most varied - but it's very good for intermediates looking for mileage.

Possible to ski over to Zermatt which will keep the experts happy, but the link can be closed if windy.

Scenery is spectacular (Matterhorn et al). Village itself lacks the character of other Italian resorts but is reasonably lively.

Courmayeur

Not a huge ski area but well-connected with a good variety of runs; fun Blues, challenging Reds and a serious Black or two. Some easy freeride between the pistes up top and some good steeps if you go looking. Possibility to do the Italian side descent of Mont Blanc - not done that myself but on my list of must-do runs for the future.

Scenery spectacular (Mont Blanc)!

Attractive village centre with good restos and a chilled-out apres (recall several bars full of lazy sofas and open fires). Bars and ski shops tend to be on the pricy side for Italy but if you have a car you can get out of town (or to Aosta city) for better value.

Very popular at weekends with day-trippers but 99% of them "ski to lunch"; pistes very busy between 11:00 and 12:00 on Sunday and virtually deserted from 12:00 until 15:00 - fantastic time to ski!


Verdict

You'll have a great time in either - if you're doing it DIY your best bet could be a few days in each.

I've been to Courmayeur and the Old Man has been to both.

C ya later for a chat!

According to info, Courmayeur has 100km of marked piste, and Cervinia 130km and 350km if you include Zermatt.
I have been to Mayrhofen which has 157km locally, and its taken me 4 visits to ski the lot.
Hmmmmm.......

Visited courmayeur in 2006 with my family plus two others.
We booked very last minute with inghams as we had already been to tremblant over christmas so therefore was in a very cheap hotel B&B so visited many bars restaurants etc and there was plenty about!
We went during feb half term so obv more cues as in every other resort in europe.

Unfortunatly i was really ill when we visited so i didnt ski as much as hoped, so i ended up with the family every day who are advanced beginners so mainly skied one big blue run all holiday which was nice and had a nice little restuarant half way down.

Snow wasn't great when we first skied on the sunday however on the monday it started snowing and the following saturday it was still coming down!

I quite liked the big cable car up to the runs etc as it meant that there was no lugging equipment around and i went up to the slopes in trainers everyday so was easy to walk.

The main criticism i had was that from the base of the skiing area you could only get up the mountain by two 2 man chairlifts which caused big cues but the lift pass was the electric type thingy so no faffing about with gettin pass out etc just swiped the machine through clothing.

I would like to visit again actually as i feel i didn't really get to explore properly and as has been said the scenery is beautiful!

There are also advantages of shortish bus transfers to la thuile and chamonix if you do get bored.

Chris

Tony_H wrote:

According to info, Courmayeur has 100km of marked piste, and Cervinia 130km and 350km if you include Zermatt.
I have been to Mayrhofen which has 157km locally, and its taken me 4 visits to ski the lot.
Hmmmmm....... 

but we did do the whole piste map in the last three days!

ellistine wrote:

Tony_H wrote:

According to info, Courmayeur has 100km of marked piste, and Cervinia 130km and 350km if you include Zermatt.
I have been to Mayrhofen which has 157km locally, and its taken me 4 visits to ski the lot.
Hmmmmm....... 

but we did do the whole piste map in the last three days! 

It did kind of feel like that, didnt it?
Funny thing is, I heard you and Rob both say you have never ski'd so much on a holiday before, but I am always up there early on, and ski as max as possible through the day. I dont like doing it the way the Europeans do, get up at 9, ski for an hour, get pissed in a bar all day and then ski off the last run at 4.30 straight into another bar, it kind of defeats the object of a ski holiday for me. Plus, these are the few times when I actually do some serious exercise!