Evasion Mont Blanc, France (Ski Area: Les Contamines): February 3, 2026 AM

[ChrisC]

Evasion Mont Blanc is a vast ski domain accessible with a single ski pass, giving one access to:

• Saint-Gervais Mont-Blanc,
• Megève,
• Saint-Nicolas de Véroce,
• Combloux,
• La Giettaz,
• Les Contamines Montjoie and
• Hauteluce

My Goal was to ski as much of it as possible in a day. I started in Les Contamines & Hautelce in the AM/Morning, and skied St. Gervais & Megeve in the PM/Afternoon. Previously, I have accumulated a storm/powder day at Megeve, a bluebird powder day at Les Contamines, and another sunny transfer day at Megeve, traveling from Val d'Isere/3 Vallees to Chamonix.

Evasion Mont Blanc - Les Contamines highlighted in RED

Les Contamines (right) and Hauteluce (left)

OpenSkiMap Topo Map
One always needs the topo map in the Alps to see WTH is really going on: exposure/orientation, lift and piste lengths, gradients, etc.

OpenSkiMap.org

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The day started overcast with flat light but gradually cleared. I stayed overnight in Les Houches, France, just outside Chamonix (a very reasonable lodging base). Mont Blanc massif (Auguille du Midi far left point) in the early morning hours, with the village of Les Houches below:

Taking the Mont Joie Gondola up from Les Contamines village

Looking over to the expert faces/bowls of Mont Joly. Exposure is East / Southeast.
Megeve is on the backside of the mountain.

Looking over to the Auguille du Roselette 2384M. Exposure: North

Making my way to the Mont Joly summit 2525M via Tierces Lift.

Sommet de l’aiguille du Croche 2487 m. Facing Mont Blanc. The light is a bit flat, but the snow is good at nearly 8000 ft!

Eventually skied off the backside to Hauteluce sector. Orientation: South and West. Snow was still good/ok due to the recent top-off, but better higher up on the westward pistes and off-piste areas.

Back on the Les Contamines north-facing aspects - the Bûche Croisée (6p Chairlift)

Visibility began to improve dramatically, so it was time to leave the piste and head over to the backside of Hauteluce. Again, Les Contamines has an almost 360-degree range of exposures, so it is easy to follow the sun progressively throughout the day.

Kept riding two lifts in order to ski the giant Croix piste and zone. Beautiful remote skiing!

Mid-mountain: Ruelle (16p Gondola) and Col du Joly (Quad).

Choton (Platter). Still some sections of unskied snow if you look....

Auguille Croche - backside

Typical Euro/IG Location Sign.
Not Bad: Les Contamines with Mont Blanc in the background.

Finally can see everything well by mid-morning.

Mont Blanc 4,807 m (15,771 ft) makes an appearance!

Trying to reski a few flat light areas from the morning...Now with a proper backdrop!

Would be a great lunch stop, Signal 1900m, but it was time to drive over to St. Gervais/Megeve...

I need to be a relaxed tourist one day.....

La Kouzna - Les Contamines-Montjoie

www.lescontamines.com

TBC....in a new thread

Thread 'Evasion Mont Blanc, France (Ski Area: Megève-St. Gervais): February 3, 2026 PM'

Yesterday at 3:24 AM

I headed over to Megève-St. Gervais for the afternoon. My goal was to also ski the Combloux-La Giettaz / Les Portes du Mont Blanc sector—an area I haven’t visited yet—, but I didn't make it over there (the short bus ride from Megève to Jaillet proved too ambitious) because I spent more time than planned at Les Contamines this morning once the sun finally came out.

I also intended to ski the expert-focused Côte 2000 section at Megève, but due to deferred lift upgrades, it took much longer than expected to access both coming and going. Hello, vintage surface lifts! Despite hosting World...

• ChrisC
• Replies: 4
• Forum: Europe & Asia

• 

 

[jamesdeluxe]

Excellent report but:

Evasion Mont Blanc is a vast ski domain accessible with a single ski pass (...) My goal was to ski as much of it as possible in a day.

Would be a great lunch stop, Signal 1900m, but it was time to drive over to St. Gervais/Megeve...

Exactly how is this different than our friend from Zurich? If it looks like a duck (à l'orange)...

 

[ChrisC]

Exactly how is this different than our friend from Zurich? If it looks like a duck (à l'orange)...

It's different because I am doing it!

I would never stop at Mad River Glen in the middle of an exceptional day for only an hour to ride the Single Chair and Sunnyside double, and then take off?! Do you know how rare the conditions were when he visited a lot of ski areas in the Northeast?



And my plans generally do awry. I accomplish a lot, no doubt; it's borderline insane when I have just a single day to ski somewhere new. But typically, I have not really made reservations.

I will determine the next ski area the day before, and pick someplace to stay either the night before or the morning.

If I were really like our Swiss Friend, I would have continued the death march into Austria and used my Epic Pass at every new (for me) mountain, in really awful machine-made WROD conditions. No way! Anything east of Zurich was experiencing very poor conditions into mid-winter.

 

[Tony Crocker]

ChrisC did not post his vertical in these last 3 TRs. But he has the same objective I do in visiting new place, to see and ski as complete an overview of the area as possible. The difference is that he covers ground a lot faster. Our survey of Grand Massif was 60K vertical over two days; his was 48K vertical in one day. I knew from his TR that I would need at least two days at Grand Massif.

I would never stop at Mad River Glen in the middle of an exceptional day for only an hour to ride the Single Chair and Sunnyside double, and then take off?! Do you know how rare the conditions were when he visited a lot of ski areas in the Northeast?

That explains @Worldskitraveller's totally misleading comments about Stowe after presumably riding the Forerunner quad only once. What really takes the cake is being close to ends-of-the-earth Mt. Bohemia and passing up a 2 foot powder day there to stay on his molehill tour schedule.

I'm also personally annoyed if weather/lift closures prevent me from getting an adequate overview by my standards, especially if what I missed is reputedly the most interesting part of the ski area. This was the situation with Avoriaz and we persisted for 7 days over two trips for adequate visibility to do the place justice.

I will say that it is extremely rare that I will ski a day that involves removing ski boots to drive to a second location. Only three such days come to mind, all in Front Range Colorado. One way I have covered more ground in the Alps is to ski the day in one direction, then take a bus or train back to my starting point.

 

[jamesdeluxe]

What really takes the cake is being close to ends-of-the-earth Mt. Bohemia and passing up a 2 foot powder day there to stay on his molehill tour schedule.

How many times are you going to? WST didn't come here to do what you want or expect him to. He was here to drive across the country and put his skis down at as many areas ride as many ski lifts (FIFY) as possible with no concern about whether they're big or tiny, the steepest, tallest, or deepest.

It's no different than me relentlessly questioning why Harvey stays in NYS and doesn't make the easy hop over the border to the Eastern Townships or northern Vermont. That's not what I would do but I'm not Harvey any more than WST isn't you.

 

[ChrisC]

ChrisC did not post his vertical in these last 3 TRs.

Les Contamines AM

 

[ChrisC]

How many times are you going to?

Forever. I am taking some of his Omissions/Early Departures to my grave -> Mortal 'Skier' Sin.

I am always chasing "ideal" conditions - or most of the time.

Generally, joy only enters the picture when I am skiing a place I have skied many times with friends or on a perfect weather day. Otherwise, it's always an optimization exercise to the extent possible.

Steepest, tallest, deepest - sure, those are nice attributes. But I typically focus on the terrain: quality, aesthetics, exposure, length, etc. Trying to pick some really remarkable terrain, and trying to ski under its best conditions. For example, Les Contamines-Megeve are not the most difficult mountains (enough challenge, not pushovers), but they are a beautiful place to ski (especially under the gaze of Mont Blanc) and a huge, sprawling ski domain that goes on for miles. Also, the lower-altitude ski resorts in France had one of their better years in the last decade, so carpe diem.

 

[Tony Crocker]

Skiing big picture should prioritize terrain (whatever each individual enjoys most personally) and snow conditions. Yes, I know the saying, "there's good snow and there's snow that's good for you." But when bad conditions reach the point of lifts/terrain closed (that includes off-piste if that's a key attribute of an area), that's the point where it's not a good use of your time or $$, especially if you're a long way from home.

For many people, resort ambience is equally important, and it's not an accident that ChrisC posted numerous Megeve pics from the resort area. So he and I might get criticism form some quarters that we aren't getting the full experience on these one-day-per-area pedal-to-the-metal ski excursions. But @Worldskitraveller is moving at perhaps an even more frenetic pace and missing a lot of the ski highlights as well.

I think ChrisC and I were set off by @Worldskitraveller's trip because it was presented as "Collecting Ski Areas," which sounded like our own priorities. No North American skier gets anywhere close to 300 ski areas without making that some level of priority and putting some sustained effort into it. When someone raised the topic on TGR, there were far fewer respondents there that here who had even 100 ski areas.

So as WST's trip unfolded in real time it looked more and more bizarre to us. Only at the very end did we find out that the prime objective was ski lifts not ski areas.

We have a lot of eccentric ski priorities on this forum. We have been at Patrick for over a decade now. I believe that in indulging the eccentricities we need to avoid the "tail wags the dog" situation. In April 2018 we stayed put in Val d'Isere for 11 days due to fabulous conditions even though at that time we had not yet skied anywhere else in the Tarantaise. Thus my criticism of Patrick has not been about what he's doing in the northern summer; it's what he's NOT doing in the northern winter in order to support The Streak.

why Harvey stays in NYS and doesn't make the easy hop over the border to the Eastern Townships or northern Vermont.

This is his first year living at Gore and skiing 100 days. He was served a steady and enviable diet of powder through February, of which we westerners could be quite envious. Will he still do that in an eastern season like 2012 or 2016? He won't have to ski "industrial resorts." As I've noted before, he could be very happy at a bunch of interior NW or Canadian areas with similar ambience to what he likes best in the East.

I would suggest that the collecting of lifts vs. areas encourages a chronic "tail wags the dog" situation. It had not even occurred to me that someone would do this, and on WST's home page listing 12 people who have skied tons of ski areas, 9 of them have n.a. in the lifts column because it probably didn't occur to them either. One of the guys who does runs the excellent liftblog site, an obvious tie-in.
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