Flaine, Belier Apartments

Flaine, Belier Apartments - One of the big positives about Flaine is the short transfer time from Geneva airport. Our journey took about one and three quarter hours of which half an hour was spent in the traffic outside the airport with all the other ski coaches. It should be said that Geneva airport isn't the best - try to spend as little time there as possible. A quick word on the company we used - Inghams. We've had some "indifferent" reps in the past but they were definitely well organised and friendly.

This holiday was our 4th week of skiing in the French Alps over the past 4 years - I suppose we probably viewed ourselves as just getting onto the intermediate plateau. At the start reds were negotiable but with some fear factor mixed in. By the end of the week we'd skied practically all the red runs in the bowl. It's definitely very good for the improver as there's lots of variety. Crystal, Serpentine and Olivine blues are nice, long, gentle carving runs whilst red Faust is excellent with just a few short steep sections at the top and a steepish section at the bottom. This piste runs all the way from the top station to the resort so you get your money's worth. We had 3 hour lessons in the morning 9.30 - 12.30 with the International Ski School who we'd chosen over ESF after an indifferent experience in Courchevel. The lessons were a bit disorganised to start with as we had two different instructors and a group size of 16! This was whittled down to 10 after 2 days and everyone improved during the 6 day course. Another impressive aspect of Flaine is the queuing and I only remember queuing once for longer than a few minutes. This was during lunchtime on the Sunday for Grand Platieres cable car to the top station which isn't bad considering the day, time and height gained. The Grand Vans 8-seater lift links Flaine to the rest of the Grand Massif domain and is very efficient. It arrives at pace, slows almost to a stop before speeding off again at quite a rate. It's worth noting that the Tourmaline blue which runs underneath does get very congested as it's the only return run into Flaine. One disappointment we had was not being able to do the famous Cascades blue piste to Sixt which is reportedly one of the longest in the Alps at 14km. We were advised to allow 4 hours (lots of view breaks) for the round trip. There is a free ski bus from Sixt and skiers can get off in Samoens or Morillon to get the lifts back to Flaine. This means that careful planning is required as the lifts close around 4.45 - 5 and it would be easy to get stranded. The run was closed for several days during the week due to high avalanche risk caused by the hot sun and so we never made it. Still, the packed lunch was put to good use on Grand Platieres with the stunning view of Mont Blanc.