Mont Blanc: Your Ultimate Guide to the Skiers’ Paradise

The excitement builds as you travel—up, up, up—driving along through folds of mountains, then beneath snow-fuzzed summits as ragged as a seismogram. Through the car window, jostling for space as if lining up for a family portrait, are the most elemental peaks in the Alps, all commanding faces skirted by white-boughed evergreens. It’s the scale that strikes you first.

Then, just as the Mont Blanc massif begins to dominate the skyline, Chamonix appears, crowded with chic hotels, chalets, and apartments engineered to mimic the surrounding landscape and fashioned from wood and slanted stone. It’s a clear sign that France’s most spectacular mountain town knows how to impress.

For decades now, Mont Blanc has been the preeminent destination for skiers, as well as snowboarders, ice climbers, and powder hunters—it is a Shangri-la for sports. Where the first Winter Olympics was born 100 years ago, the region has all the elements of a classic winter vacation: a drapery of fast cable cars, powder bowls, and inviting après-ski bars. And the matrix of towns themselves—Chamonix, Argentière, Les Houches, Saint-Gervais-les-Bains, and Megève—is home to another trump card. Many of the best restaurants and bars in the Alps are there, with dozens feeling like unexpected jackpot wins.

This valley has a poetic and an aesthetic dimension that few destinations can match. It’s also all about the history and myth, as many pioneers left their mark here—Vivian Bruchez

That’s the beauty of the destination, but if you’re a first-time visitor, where’s the best place to begin and how do you conquer the region? If one was scouring all of Mont Blanc for a man who could be said to know it all, then the search would likely end with mountain guide, steep-skiing specialist, and Chamonix-based instructor Vivian Bruchez. According to the best-in-class skier, the key is to reset your expectations.

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“Chamonix is all about verticality and majestic mountains, and when you walk through the valley, it’s an everyday sight,” says Bruchez, who has a number of first Chamonix and Mont Blanc descents to his name. “This valley has a poetic and an aesthetic dimension that few destinations can match. It’s also about the history and myth, as many pioneers left their mark here.”

For accessible, all-round family terrain, Bruchez recommends the Balme ski area. “It’s gentle and forgiving,” he says, “while the view over the valley and the Mont Blanc massif is truly magnificent. For off-piste, my favorite area is Grands Montets. It’s where everything began for me. I did my first descent of the Grands Montets aged four. It’s the link between resort skiing and the very high mountains.”

Few can ski like Bruchez, but naturally, the Mont Blanc massif is not short on skiing options. You get the Alpine highs of five ski areas in the Chamonix Valley—Grands Montets, Les Houches, Le Tour/Balme, La Flégère, and Le Brévent—and, in the neighboring basin, the quieter Evasion Mont Blanc ski area, which spreads out from Saint-Gervais Mont Blanc to Les Contamines.

It might sound daunting, but even in this lesser-known part of the massif, where outstanding views dip and twist from every chairlift, there are around 227 slopes and 249 miles (400 km) of pistes.

Skiing for All Abilities

According to another local expert, Laurent Duffoug-Favre—CEO and owner of Mont Blanc Immobilier, the exclusive affiliate of Christie’s International Real Estate in the region—the simplest shortcut to easily navigated, big-mountain kicks is the Vallée Blanche. “It’s accessible via the Aiguille du Midi cable car and offers an exceptional off-piste route over 12.4 miles (20 km) in the heart of the massif, traversing glaciers between seracs and crevasses and, always, with majestic panoramas,” he says. “It’ll create memories for a lifetime.”

Inspired? Then unless you’re a record-breaking freerider like Bruchez, you’ll need a qualified guide to take you there. “Chamonix represents a land of adventure that is both beautiful and imposing, but it’s inevitably risky,” Bruchez says. “So humility is paramount.”

Everyday thrills, on the other hand, are wonderfully within reach. In theory, you can ski almost from dawn to dusk in the Mont Blanc resorts: in peak season, the Aiguille du Midi cable car, the highest in France, is open from 7.30 a.m. to 5.30 p.m. In practice, even when the powder is perfect, there’s an equal thrill in retreating from the slopes to find the ideal après-ski bar or restaurant, where there is almost as much whooping as you’d hear on a much-loved piste.

All of this explains why a lifelong resident like Duffoug-Favre has so many places to recommend to his international clients. A huge hit for many visitors, he says, is Restaurant Albert 1er, a Michelin one-star kitchen founded in 1903. You can eat the best ingredients from the mountains there and, in season, there also may be snails harvested from around the massif, morels from Annecy, catfish from Lake Geneva, and poultry served on a bed of hay from Vallorcine. All the produce leans heavily on the landscape, giving it a timeless feeling.

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“Auberge du Bois Prin in Chamonix is another not to miss,” says Duffoug-Favre. “There, chef Emmanuel Renaut, a Meilleur Ouvrier de France winner, offers natural and authentic cuisine made with local products.” And the best bit? There’s a cellar stocked with some of the finest wines from the Alpine region to complete the experience.

The towns of the Chamonix Valley are not just about tradition, with their flower-festooned window boxes, but are also about pushing living culture in their bars and hotels. Heading the pack, at least in après-ski terms, is La Folie Douce, which has two outposts in the Mont Blanc area. The bar at the summit of the Mont-Joux chairlift in Saint-Gervais takes the crown as the best see-and-be-seen spot for its parties featuring singers, musicians, and DJs every afternoon, but its sibling hotel in Chamonix is right behind. Marked by both Mont Blanc and Brévent views, it is a lifestyle powerhouse, with a heated outdoor pool and pro shop for that retro or here-and-now on-slope look.

The message is clear: Mont Blanc, with its magnetic summits beckoning you to rise early and après-ski scene luring you out until late, will pull you in eventually. How could it not?

Ready to join the ski set? Find your perfect ski and mountain home, and read more from the Fall/Winter issue of Christie’s International Real Estate here.

Banner image: © Benjamin Frison