Evasion Mont-Blanc

Évasion Mont-Blanc gathers the resorts on the Haute-Savoie side of the Mont Blanc massif, above the Sallanches valley and about an hour up from Geneva. Megève is the centre of gravity — an old, moneyed village whose slopes climb Rochebrune, Mont d'Arbois and Côte 2000 — and its lifts link over Mont Joux and Mont d'Arbois to Saint-Gervais and the high balcony hamlet of Saint-Nicolas-de-Véroce, while Combloux and La Giettaz hang off the Jaillet side. The marketed figure is around 400 km of piste on one pass, but the network isn't a single web: Les Contamines-Montjoie sits in its own valley and is on the pass without being connected by lift, so reaching it means a short drive or bus. This is not the Chamonix valley next door — it's a lower, more pastoral corner, tree-lined and sunny, built for cruising with a view rather than for steeps. Where you base changes the feel more than the skiing does.

The setting and the ease. Few areas this size put you eye-to-eye with Mont Blanc from so much of the piste, and fewer still do it an hour from a major airport with skiing this gentle and this sunny. Megève brings a genuine village — proper streets, good food, a horse-drawn-sleigh kind of charm — rather than a purpose-built base, and the linked sectors give a confident intermediate days of unhurried, view-heavy cruising. Add Les Contamines up its own valley for the day you want colder snow and a bit more bite.

Broad, sunny and mostly mellow. The skiing runs over a series of rounded, wooded summits — Rochebrune, Mont d'Arbois, Mont Joux — with pistes that swoop and roll through larch forest rather than plunge, and lunch terraces angled at the Mont Blanc massif across the valley. It skis as an intermediate's domain first and foremost, generous with reds and long blues, gentle enough for families and beginners on the lower slopes. The steeper, wilder skiing is off to the side — Mont Joly's upper reaches and, more so, the separate Les Contamines valley.