The Size of This Place is Insane
Val Thorens is the highest ski resort in Europe and the highest point of the 3 Vallées ski area. Also, it is notably the largest resort in the world with over 600km of pistes.
The highest point is Pointe du Bouchet, sitting at 3230m! On top of that, the resort itself covers approximately 140 square kilometers, or 54 square miles, of skiable terrain. That is a wild number.
Val Thorens has 31 chairlifts operating between November to early May, and these lifts will connect you between all 3 valleys of the resort.
I mean, just take a look at my friend Chris here shredding. The night before it snowed a good amount and with a perfect bluebird day it just cannot get any better than this. Because Val Thorens is such a huge place to roam around, it becomes a magical playground for us adults. Believe me, there are a lot of people, but again, thanks to the size, the resort can handle the numbers with no problem. It never felt crowded.
Above the Tree Line
What you can also notice in the picture above is that there are no trees. Most of Val Thorens’ skiable areas are above the tree line, which means, you can make your own tracks off pistes at your will. You can do this all day long as well! Turns out the Europeans much prefer skiing the pistes even on a pow day.
As my Dutch friend Ben will say, the Europeans stay home on a powder day because it snowed too much, and we foreigners get happy as a puppy as if we’ve never seen a powder day before.
Ticket Price
Val Thorens is not part of the major passes such as Ikon and Epic. So you will have to buy day passes. But worry not, 1 day pass will cost you 65 Euros just for Val Thorens, and if you want a day pass that gets you full access to all 3 valleys, it will cost you 75 Euros. But from the 5th day, you get discounts!
This is far better than any of the ticket prices in the US where a day pass can cost you $250.
Apres
Now we’re talking. This is the part where it’s simply incomparable to the American or Japanese resorts.
The Europeans know how to apres ski. If anything, apres seems to come first, and then ski second.
There are plenty of places you can go to party, but two places that stood out for me are La Folie Douce, and Le Monde.
Above is the video of my 2023 European ski trip, and from minute 3:48 to 4:43 you can see how awesome of a place La Folie Douce is.
However, be warned that there will be a lot of people so it will be quite a while until it’s your turn to order drinks. So the solution we had was to book a private table. It cost us 100 Euros per person, and it wasn’t just a fee to get your table! You get to order the total sum’s amount of drinks. There were 9 of us and that meant we ordered 900 Euros worth of drinks before we spent more. I’d say that’s a fantastic deal for a place like this.
The music was amazing too! The DJs are brilliant and they also had a fella playing his saxophone to add to the vibe. Great stuff
Lodging
Our lodging for a week was brilliant. It 4 bedrooms, and we were able to ski-in ski-out. Have you ever seen a video of Val Thorens where people are throwing snowballs from their chairlifts to the balcony of lodges, and vice versa? Well, we were doing the same thing, haha. Some of our friends who went for the first chairlift were going past our lodge, and both groups threw snowballs at each other.
I highly recommend booking something that is closest to the lift!
Food
Carbonara at a small lodge in the middle of the run. ’nuff said. I will never be able to get chicken tenders again at any American resorts.
If you have any questions or need more tips, feel free to reach out to me!
Instagram: @thehighflyingkorean
Email: 1892flee@gmail.com
