This well-known French ski resort is a perfect home for beginners
Courchevel is renowned for the high life, but beginners can find their own playground on the slopes
The French ski resort of Courchevel might have a reputation for being a playground for the super-rich, but its superlative ski schools and nursery slopes make it the perfect place to learn to ski.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in high-altitude village Courchevel 1850 where the magic carpet lifts (think conveyer belts that whisk you up and down the slope) and speed-freak-deterring barriers of its Jardin Alpin beginners’ area will make even the most trepidatious ski virgin feel at ease.
Best of all, there’s plenty of blue and green runs (aka the easiest) should you feel like testing those new-found ski skills and letting your adrenaline truly rip.
Things to know
Make no mistakes, learning to ski is tough: spending all day scudding down a slope is liable to leave you with sore shins, tender thighs and a new-found familiarity with your anterior cruciate ligaments. That’s why some proper five-star pampering is paramount.
Enter the Six Senses Residences Courchevel, with its bouji boot room (heated so you can get changed in warmth), a ski concierge (on-hand to answer novice-related ski questions) and all the muscle-soothing massages, sauna and outdoor hot tub action you could wish for.
The rooms – either self-contained duplex penthouses or apartments – all come with swoon-worthy views of surrounding saw-toothed mountains.
Courchevel is also famed for its ultra-efficient ski lifts (unsurprising given many of them are sponsored by Prada and Chanel), which not only frees up more hours on the slopes, but also gives you more time to sample the après-ski.
This is where Courchevel shines as incandescently as the snow on its Alpine peaks, with eight Michelin-star restaurants, innumerable bars and designer boutiques where you could spy a minor royal or Beckham (the family holidayed here last winter).
Don’t forget to pack
Your rented skiwear (just in case you don’t take to it). Try Hurr Collective, Ecoski or Selfridges Rental. And a BIG tube of Deep Heat (you’ll be discovering muscles you never knew you had).