Spotlight on Morzine-Avoriaz: a ski resort for all the family
Looking for a great ski area to recommend for a family holiday? You can’t go far wrong with Morzine-Avoriaz in the heart of the vast Portes du Soleil ski area in France, just an hour’s drive from Geneva airport.
The area offers nursery slopes and child-care for little ones, snowparks for early teens, and a vast ski and ride area for confident skiers, plus plenty of easily accessible off-piste.
There’s a choice of accommodation from self-catering units to smarter chalets plus a variety of dining options on the slopes, including indoor picnic areas.
Avoriaz is the highest of the two resorts, with lots of enormous apartment blocks right on the slopes, while Morzine, lower down the mountain, is a traditional French village with chocolate-box chalets, a brand new shiny watersports centre and plenty of shops and restaurants.
Morzine has its own ski area with beginners slopes that are ideal for first-timers and early improvers, while more confident skiers can take the cable car from the village up to Avoriaz which links into the immense Portes du Soleil area which straddles both France and Switzerland and offers 650kms of skiing.
In the centre of Avoriaz, children as young as three can be deposited in the Children’s Village, while older kids will love the five dedicated freestyle zones, including the Jake Burton-inspired snowpark, the Stash, where my kids spent hours last Easter (see video).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofxsmT0GMzE&feature=youtu.be
This year, two sledging pistes will be created at the base of the Pleney ski slopes in Morzine, one for three to six-year olds, the other for older kids and adults.
From next February half-term, there will be a new €25m high-speed 3S cable car from Morzine to Avoriaz to replace the old Prodains gondola, cutting queue times, and a new six-seater high-speed Troncs chairlift in Morzine-Les Gets ski area to improve access to the Nyon plateau and snowpark.
We loved Morzine-Avoriaz, the only downside being the area is quite low and prone to rain, something you don’t want when you’re skiing, so I wouldn’t recommend it for a late season holiday, although a lack of snow shouldn’t be a problem towards the end of the winter, especially as the area has installed an extra 30 cannons in Nyon, Chamossiere, and on Pleney to ensure more than 70% of the Morzine ski area has snow-making.
We stayed with Rude Chalets in Chalet Christophe, which was excellent, and flew with Swiss Air to Geneva. Ski operators that feature Morzine-Avoriaz include Crystal Ski, Inghams, Neilson and VIP Ski.
By Linsey McNeill, photographs by Jarry Tripelon and Matthieu Vitre
Linsey McNeill
Editor Linsey McNeill has been writing about travel for more than three decades. Bylines include The Times, Telegraph, Observer, Guardian and Which? plus the South China Morning Post. She also shares insider tips on thetraveljournalist.co.uk
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