In 2019 February I made a ski trip to Tignes in France with my children Camilla and Daniel.
We had been planning this trip one year ahead, and I bought flights from Helsinki to Geneva already in August 2018. Then found good accommodation at a decent price from Pierre & Vacances web site to Residence Inter-Residences at Tignes Val Claret. Then also discovered that we can travel by ALTIBUS bus from Geneva airport to Tignes Val Claret, so no need to rent a car. The return flight was on Sunday, so we needed one night accommodation near Geneva airport for Sat/Sun.
The last time I had been in this area of Val d’Isere / Tignes, once called “Espace Killy”, was in 1994, just before my kids were born. Amazing how time flies, whopping 25 years ago! I had been here many times back then in 90’s and 80’s, first time in fact in 1975, and there were many fond memories of this vast ski area – now finally new ones with my kids who had never been here before.
So we stayed at the valley of Tignes, which has many villages, and the Val Claret is the highest one at 2100 meters. The house we were staying at is one of the oldest ones in Val Claret. A nice feature in it was the sauna and swimming pool. The apartment we had rented was tiny, but adequate for us that were here just for the skiing. There was a kitchen so we made most dinners ourselves at the apartment.
From our house there was a short walking distance to the Grande Motte base station, from where you can take a tunnel funicular up to Grande Motte glacier at 3032 m. The train ride up is just a few minutes. From upper station you can get even higher with a Telepherique (cable car) up to 3456 m. From Val Claret you can also take either of the two chair lifts to Val d’Isere valley, or go other direction to ski the sun facing slopes of Tignes valley.
We had mostly sunny days, and only one cloudy day. Lots of good snow and the skiing was really great.
The lift system is really modern and all the gondolas and chair lifts have been upgraded since my last visit in 1994. There were hardly any lift queues on our week, but then this first week of February is usually still pretty quiet, as the high season begins on the 2nd week of February. With the fast lifts we could make it very quickly from Tignes to the other end of area at Col de L’Iseran glacier and back. We manged to ski all the lifts and most of the runs during this week. The longest run is the black “Sache” from l’Aigulle du Percee at 2748 m down to Tignes Les Brevieres at 1550 m. We skied a lot the “Face” run down from Grande Motte to our village as it was 1000 meters vertical and a very good run just in front of us.
Photos:
https://photos.leiman.fi/2019-tignes
Ski area map
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