[Closed] Tell me about Skiing in Morzine...

I love Morzine and all the bits around the Portes du Soleil. Get out there exploring.

Personal favourite is Lac Montriond, up to Ardent.

Swiss wall is good for a skier - not nice for a boarder 🙂

And the off piste above Chatel is sweet. Except for when my mate totalled it and he got helo'd off 🙂

hmm, well i live here, so get to ski pretty regularly (tomorrow will be 4th time this week, inbetween all the work i've got!).

I only started skiing this winter, so i'm no expert - gonna do my 1st black run tomorrow all being well. season so far has been pretty crap though, we've had about 3cm of snow since xmas... and a massive thaw for the past 3 weeks. pistes today were in great condition after it went below zero for the first time in weeks + the snow cannons... made such a difference compared to the ice and/or slush we've had recently.

hopefully by the time you come out there will have been more snow - we've had a sprinkling tonight.

I've only got a les gets/morzine/avoriaz pass, but there is plenty here for me to be getting on with - plus there is the off piste (which i have done a little of).

the les gets/morzine area is pretty big though, with loads of pistes of all types, and plenty of lifts to get around (although i've found the piste map to be a bit crap...).

i live just down in montriond, so ardent is the easiest way into the ski area, with good access to avoriaz too. again, plenty to be getting on with there, and some really nice pistes, not too busy either.

start of march - i think there are some cool things going on around Nyon on the 2nd - DJs, ski/board shows etc.

oh, and it seems bloody expensive to a northerner like me - 7 quid for a plate of chips?!

whereabouts are you staying?

Staying in a Chalet just out of town, 5 min drive to the lifts I think.

Fingers crossed for more snow...do you know any good hire shops, cheap of course i'm from Yorkshire!

only ones i know are near montriond -

http://www.allmountainrental.com/index.htm quoted me 100 euros/6 days for a mate (boots and skis, not this years, but fine for beginner - more pricey for newer stuff)

Rhodos/The Lodge have a ski hire shop near here - was more pricey than allmountainrental, but i'm not sure what quality they were

there is a local place in montriond which was also 100 euros for beginner kit, but as i'm local, i can get my mate, who i was looking at it for, 20% off 8)

so yeah, depends on what level of stuff - can be done for 100 euros, but if you want newer/more advanced kit, probably more like 160/170 for a week (thats skis and boots and poles mind...)

not sure whether renting in advance via someone like http://www.morzinelets.com/extras/winterskis.asp is worth it or not - i have my own kit, so not hiring...

lots of runs that seem better suited for skiers than boarders would be my humble opinions (went there for a week last year so i'm not exactly an authority!)

we found the french skiers VERY rude to us boarders, still being beginners mrsconsequnce and myself took a couple of really nasty falls on one of the blue runs and lots of french skiers took the opportunity to ski as close to us as possible spraying snow in our faces shouting "get off the slopes" and "you are mediocre, go away" in heavy french accents. Really set the tone for our holiday 🙁

(not saying all skiers are like that! jsut got back from an amazing week in alpe d'huez where we didnt come across any bad attitude between skiers and boarders)

QUOTE: philconsequence - Member
we found the french skiers VERY rude to us boarders UNQUOTE.

That's not typical by any means.

I'd wager that those who were hostile towards you were yuppy Parisiens, the local French don't like them either. They're easily identified in the evenings by their ridiculous penchant for sweaters tied around the neck and draped over the shoulders.

Have a look at http://www.doorstepskis.com/ for rentals, run by a friend who offers fuss free rentals in Morzine..... top biker too....

🙂 yeah guessed it wasn't typical, but for some reason that week in morzine and avoriaz it was really really prevalent!

due to the weather on our first day the main gondola was shut and our group took us up a horribly steep chair lift (first ever time on a chair lift) in a near white-out (freezing rainy sleet coming almost perfectly sideways blowing the chair about) to the top of a red run (our first ever time on a mountain and on real snow) and the group just belted down it leaving me and mrsconsequence to make our way down and find them.

it was horrific, i fell so many times and managed to twist my back and plant my board into my lower back several times and had tears running down my face (under my goggles luckily.. real man me 😳 ) it hurt so much. so having these yuppie rude idiots trying to get as close as possible and making comments the whole way down really didnt help.

as i said though, just came back from an incredible week in alp d'huez and i'm still buzzing on how much fun i had with a much better group of friends and with absolutely no attitude between skiers and boarders 😀

think that week last year was a combination of a million rubbish factors all rolling into one week and well yeah... it wasnt great.

spending tonight and tomorrow working on more editing of the video we took!

Morzine has great tree-skiing if you like rat-runs through the forest, but only really worth skiing when there's decent snow. The last few years have been excellent, this year's been a bit rubbish so far.

Head over to Les Gets (15 mins via a couple of skilifts) and the snow holds on longer, 'cos it's a few hundred metres higher.

When both of these areas are a bit worn out, head to Avoriaz, which is on the French-Swiss border, It's well above the treeline, so it's typically got wider runs, and there's loads of good off-piste areas there, along with a couple of jumpparks for boarders, and a huge half pipe.

Food? Everywhere's expensive, just expect it. A decent restaurant (none of them are awful, but many have only traditional Savoyard stuff - cheese, meat, meat & cheese are the three staple dishes) is L'Etale, which is just by the Pleney lift.

My advice would be to get a Portes Du Soleil lift pass (rather than just Morzine/Les Gets) for the week you're out there, which takes you as far as Switzerland; by the start of March the snow will almost certainly be very thin in Morzine itself. That said, I was there in April last year and it was fine. Keep looking at the webcams and make your own mind up.

http://www.skiclub.co.uk/skiclub/snowreports/snowreport.aspx?resort=Morzine

The ribs in the L'Etale are some of the best anywhere in the world 🙂

Take lots of money with you. I also tend to agree there are more runs suited to skiing but there are some nice board runs.

I'm here at the moment with www.Hofnar.com It's only 10 Euros for a 3 course meal with beers and wine and the host allows you to make sandwiches and take some fruit for your lunch, so it's worked out quite cheap.