On the slopes - and on top of the world

Staying in a top-notch chalet in one of France's leading resorts is a far cry from learning to ski in Australia. ADAM HARVEYdecides he could learn to enjoy holidaying in such style

IT’S HARD TO SAY when I realised I was unlikely to have a holiday like this again. Was it when our chalet’s personal chef pulled out his flame-thrower to caramelise the top of our creme brulees? Was it when I staggered up for breakfast, to hunt through the cupboards for a box of cornflakes, to be met by staff armed with espressos and an extravagance of eggs, bacon and pancakes? Or was it on the mountain, when my personal ski guide called a temporary halt to a 60-minute descent from France to Switzerland so we could peer through his binoculars at a herd of mountain goats on the far side of the valley?

This wasn’t skiing as I knew it. In Australia, where I learned the sport, we bunked six to a room in a town an hour’s drive from the mountain, and when we finally got there we were grateful if there was any snow at all. In Oz there were three snow conditions: sheet ice, slush or grass. Five-star chalets were incomprehensible, something that happened in a different climate and income bracket.

The special treatment in Morzine was bound to induce delusions, and the sense of invincibility that saw me throw myself down an off-piste couloir – a steep, narrow gully – called Le Plat Plan almost got me killed two days later back in Dublin, on Amiens Street, when I ran straight off the airport bus and into the path of a fast- moving car. The vehicle stopped, and so did my daydreams about the rarified air of the French Alps.

For a while, anyway. Snapshots of Morzine-Avoriaz were still playing through my head months later: a wind-whipped chairlift ride out of a Swiss village, on to an ice-scoured pass and back into a sheltered pocket of France, where three-metre mounds of powder had accumulated in the lee of the mountain; a run through pine trees where the snow was so deep I couldn’t see my skis for minutes at a time; and the blissful final morning in Morzine’s Les Gets area, where three of our group begged our trip organiser to delay departure for an hour so we could have an extra 90 minutes’ skiing.

It meant buying a half-day lift pass for about €20, but I don’t think I’ve spent money so wisely since I bought a pair of waterproof boots to deal with my second Dublin summer.

We enjoyed half a dozen glorious five-kilometre runs through fresh snow that had been compacted into corduroy by the snow groomer – the intermediate skier’s equivalent of a red-carpet entrance.

We’d studied the trail map carefully the night before and headed straight for the highest run in Les Gets, three chair rides and a complicated traverse from the mountain’s base. Our efforts paid off: the other early birds didn’t catch us for an hour or so, and until they did ours were the only tracks on the mountain. Those stolen descents in the crisp Alpine sunshine rank up there with the best runs of my life. Our big, high-speed turns left long S-shaped trails in the snow, and there was plenty of time to admire them as we caught the chair back up.

I think I enjoyed them so much because the skiing on the other two days had been such a challenge. The previous day Laurent and I took a trip down the mist-shrouded Vallée Blanche. It was an off-piste run that seemed a lot more impressive afterwards, when I amplified the adventure to other skiers in a bar at the bottom of the mountain. Yeah, mate, out of bounds; it was a bit scary, but we just strapped on the beepers and went for it – took an hour to get to the bottom.

I didn’t tell them how tough I found it. It was late in the season, and the snow was heavy, topped on the ungroomed areas by a wind-formed crust that broke as you skied over it, dropping you into a soupy, unstable base. It was like skiing on pavlova, and it was difficult to turn. It was tough enough following Laurent’s tracks; I was pouring sweat as I overexaggerated each turn to free myself from the mush.

The reason for wearing the beepers – avalanche beacons – became clear about 10 minutes into the run. There was evidence of past avalanches everywhere, from small ones, where pebble-sized snowballs had sprayed down the mountain as though they’d been tipped from a wheelbarrow, to bigger falls that had ripped all the snow off the slope, formed snow boulders the size and weight of fridges, and exposed raw patches of grass and mud.

We could ski around most of the falls, but one was unavoidable, and Laurent led me through it: it was the only time in three days that I saw him look worried, glancing above us every few seconds.

We skied where we could and hopped along when we came to a short patch that had been stripped of snow. “You need to keep your skis on,” he said. “If it falls again it will take too long to put the skis back again, and we will not be able to get out of the way.”

It was a relief to be clear of the fall zone. Following in the tracks of an expert like Laurent made it easier than it would otherwise have been. If I’d been alone the run down would have been a painful two-hour descent, and I would have probably just gone back to the chalet afterwards and collapsed.

Laurent had a more memorable finish lined up: a pastis at a wooden chalet buried in the trees at the bottom of the valley. It was an uphill hike from the nearest road, and the only other customers were a couple of snowshoers. We imbibed and departed to the nearest road, about a kilometre away, where a bus to Morzine village was waiting.

Morzine and Avoriaz are the two biggest villages in a vast complex that straddles 11 ski areas on the Alpine border between Switzerland and France, not far from Lake Geneva. It’s possible to ski across the whole resort and back in a day, helped by a couple of five-minute bus trips between villages. We did it, but it was a real hustle, and I would have liked to stop and try a couple of the runs a second or third time.

We took the best run just once: the off-piste Le Plat Plan, named for the flat rock that marks the entrance to a couloir at the top of the mountain.

Laurent motioned me to halt just before we reached the jump-off point, a narrow single track that runs about two-thirds of the way up a steep hillside.

He unzipped his well-ordered daypack and pulled out a pair of avalanche beacons, which looked like walkie-talkies without the aerials. He fitted them into their holsters, we put them on under our jackets, and Laurent tested the batteries and switched the beacons to “send”.

It was for my sake rather than his: our only shovel was in his pack, and if only Laurent was buried I’d have little chance of digging him out: post- avalanche, even the lightest snow takes on the consistency of concrete.

It was hardly light snow that day, if that was some consolation: it had been about 10 days since the previous fall, and the daily thaw and nightly refreeze had put a hard crust over the snow. We ducked under the out-of-bounds rope and headed off-piste to Le Plat Plan. It was a scary drop-off, shaped like a funnel, with a narrow entrance, a few metres across, widening to a couple of hundred metres down on the valley floor, hundreds of metres below us. Laurent picked up a gloveful of snow, compressed it and let it fall: it was powdery, which was good. Too sticky and the avalanche risk would be greater. He nodded and we took off into the deep snow. He made it look easy; let’s just say my descent wouldn’t have made the final cut of a Warren Miller ski film.

Thanks to days like that I was usually the last of our group of eight to arrive back at the chalet. Up an ornate staircase – glass steps, with banisters and framework made from artfully twisted metal – past the bedroom level and up to a split-level entertaining, dining and kitchen floor, where dinner was usually well under way. The chef – an English snowboarder with an unfortunate snow tan, his face singed to resemble shoe leather aside from a white patch around his eyes – was a rare talent. It was a decent night’s entertainment just watching him make dessert, heating a caramel glaze until it was just viscous enough to drizzle around a metal tube. When it set he scraped the spiral on to the dessert: chocolate fondant with a chocolate-and-Baileys foam.

Despite his brilliant efforts with dishes such as duck breast with a sweet-potato puree, the highlight of each night’s meal was the cheese plate – mostly local cheeses from nearby valleys, including a log of creamy white goat’s cheese that was barely set, spilling on to the cutting board as soon as the knife perforated the rind. I polished off the remainder of the log the next morning, when I came upstairs and discovered it on the table.

- Week-long trips start at €805 for adults and €658 for under-12s, staying in chalets with meals prepared by professionally trained chefs. Prices include mini-coach transfers from Geneva or Lyons airport, ski guiding and accommodation in facilities that include saunas, hot tubs and log fires. Food, wine and bar are free. Highlife also has a free kids’ club during certain weeks.

Adam Harvey was a guest of Highlife (01-6771100, highlife.ie); morzine- avoriaz.com