Hi friends! I wanted to highlight one of my favorite ski areas, les Portes du Soleil and the French alpine village of Châtel. We’ve been three out of the last four years and have gotten to know it well! This last trip was such a magical time with days full of skiing and phenomenal mountainside restau,rants and evenings spent cooking in our apartment then snuggling up on the couch watching French tv over a bottle of wine. 🙂 If you know me well, that pretty much sums up my dream life, haha!! The Chatel and the Portes du Soleil is one of my FAVORITE ski holidays, and I’m here to tell you everything you need to know about it! Just like my Paris Guide, I’ve broken it into sections and have an interactive map at the end. Enjoy!
Why I Love the Portes du Soleil
Skiing the Portes du Soleil: Planie Dranse, Les Lindarets, Les Mossettes, Les Brochaux, and Les Grandes Combes
Portes du Soleil Interactive Map
Why I Love the Portes du Soleil
We try to ski the Portes du Soleil every year and love it for it’s quaint village charm, delicious French-Savoyard food, large ski area covering two countries, and good prices on lift pases. The less-than 5 hour drive to Chatel makes it easy to reach from Stuttgart, too. We have come to know the town of Chatel pretty well, as well as the ski area and have so many favorite spots!
The Portes du Soleil ski pass covers 12 towns in France and Switzerland, covering about 600km of slopes. The majority of the slopes are red runs, with a few blacks and more blues. We usually stick to the red runs and blacks, and have started dabbling off piste and had plenty to explore over the four days we skied (and past five years!)
As I mentioned, we’ve always stayed in Châtel, a French alpine village just across the Swiss border. We prefer to stay on the French side for the better prices and good food and wines. (In general, Switzerland is always pricey compared to the rest of mainland Europe, although their slopes are usually wide and fun to ski). 🙂 The town of Châtel has everything you need, including our favorite bakery serving croissants and quiches in the mornings, or patisseries and baguettes in the evenings. Another town in the Portes du Solieil I love is Avoriaz, a ski-in, ski-out resort nestled amongst the slopes and oozing with charm. There are no cars here, only horse drawn carriages and lamp posts covered in snow. It is a village out of my dream and very centrally located to the best slopes!
Skiing the Portes du Soleil
The Portes du Soleil coveres 600km of pistes in both France and Switzerland, all covered in the Portes du Soleil ski pass! I’ll outline the areas that are our favorites, but please know you can obviously explore so much more!
Planie Dranse
The Chatel église (Chatel church) is the main meeting spot in town. Ride the free ski bus Line 1 towards Linga/Pre la Joux. Stay on until the 3rd stop, and you reach the Pierre Longue lift. Ride Pierre Longue up, and the area at the top of the lift is the Châtel area called Planie Dranse which offers multiple red and blue runs and even one green run, as well as nice chalet restaurants for lunch or an afternoon pit stop. Most of the restaurants will have a fire going, they are all so cozy. You can certainly spend a day or half day here, and I recommend you do. But please make sure to take the Rochassons lift from Planie Dranse and ski into the Avoriaz sector. Just make sure you’ve purchased the Portes du Soleil ski pass, which covers the entire ski area.
Les Lindarets
Ski down the red or blue run into Avoriaz known as the Chaux Fleurie and you end at Les Lindarets. I refer to this as “the meeting spot” because it’s a huge open area where five lifts meet, as well as a lot of restaurants and bars. The vibe here is happy and feels like the ‘it’ spot to meet with friends. In the morning and mid day it’s sun-soaked, with people lounging on chairs soaking up the sun, or posting up at Les Alpages sur les Pistes, a bass heavy techno & house music outdoor ‘bar’ filled with people grabbing coffee or beers and listening to the beat.
Sometimes I wander at everything around me, taking it all in and how it reflects a mini city above the clouds, with such a different viewpoint than normal life on the streets below. 🙂
Les Alpages sur les Pistes became our go-to cappuccino stop this trip. It was actually really fun to eat breakfast at home, then ski down to our cappuccinos!
From Les Lindarets, you have a plethora of regions to explore. One of my favorite runs this year was taking the Lindarets lift up and skiing the red Lindarets run back down. It is a beautiful, tree-lined run and especially wonderful after a fresh snowfall! We were lucky we had one perfect morning with fresh powder, and skied this run, venturing off-piste quite a bit weaving through the snow drenched evergreen trees. It was one of my favorite memories! Going through fresh powder feels like floating on clouds, it is so light and seriously AMAZING!
The other run we tried and kind of loved was the Stash, an ecological snow park by Burton filled with ramps, pipes, and other fun surprises. Get here by taking the Lindarets, Prolays, or Brochaux lifts to Avoriaz. I’ve always thought of snow parks more for snowboarders, but we actually had a ton of fun trying out the jumps! David was much more adventurous than me – I only did mini baby jumps but FELT very daring. 😉
Pointe des Mossettes, Switzerland
Back at the Lindarettes “meeting spot”, you can ski into Switzerland by taking the Lecherie lift and then the Cases or Mosettes-France lifts to get to the Mossettes area. At the top of the mountain, you’re now at the Pointe des Mossettes. From here, there are plenty of red or blue runs on the Swiss side. In past years I fell in love with this area, full of extra wide pistes and fun mountain sides where you can easily go off-piste but still follow the general way back down to the lift. It’s just one large mountainside for you to ski, with stunning views of jagged cliffs, to les 4 Vallees ski region beyond.
Unfortunately this year the snow coverage on this side of town was very little, and it just didn’t feel the same as it had before. We skied here a bit but eventually headed back to the west-facing slopes since they seemed to have much better snow coverage. You defintely need to check it out though, it can be absolutely magical if there’s enough snow!
Les Brochaux
After skiing Les Crosets and into Switzerland, come back to France for lunch. From the Pointe Des Mossettes, you can take a black run down (or blue, or red) to Les Brochaux, a cute tiny little area with three mountain side restaurants and my absolute FAVORITE place to eat lunch (more on that below in the restaurants section).
As I mentioned, there are multiple ways to access Les Brochaux, depending on your skill level, but you will likely have to traverse a bunch of moguls. One day while taking the Cases lift up, I scoped out a beautiful mountainside with tons of fresh off-piste snow (but also enough tracks that I felt it was safe, and I could see the path we wanted to take from the lift above). Once we got to the top, off the mountain side we went, traversing through untouched, powdery snow as we navigated. It was the BEST. We stayed off piste for about halfway down – probably over 1000m before we traversed back towards the piste and hopped on. Turns out it was a black run, and we had been exploring the ungroomed area all around it. This was defintely a cool moment for me!
Les Grandes Combes
The last area I wanted to highlight, also off of Avoriaz, is Les Grandes Combes. From Avoriaz, take the Grandes Combes lift up, up, up the mountain until you feel like you’re getting dropped off in the snowy wilderness. 😉 This year when we got to the top it had just started snowing, making it even more magical. Les Grand Combes is two long black runs, leading all the way down to the Prodains main lift.
Where to Eat on the Pistes
In Les Brochaux: Les Ancelles
My number one piece of advice, is you must eat lunch at Les Ancelles restaurant at les Brochaux lift. The interior is classic rustic alpine with a covered outdoor patio on the back, and the food is absolutely divine. If I could eat lunch here every day, I would!
I’ve had both the beef bourguignon and the carbonara and they are to. die. for. It always amazes me how well some slope-side restaurants are when they seem so remote! The carbonara comes piping hot with a freshly cracked egg yoke for you to mix right in, and the beef bourguignon was simply out of this world. It came with multiple veggies of the day, including mashed parsnips which we immediately re-created at home. Bottom line: eat here!
In Avoriaz: Les Trappeurs
If you’re near Avoriaz town, Les Trappeurs is always a solid lunch choice. It has a nice outdoor patio vibe, or warm up at one of the many tables inside. David LOVES getting melted, bubbling l’Abundance cheese served on a hot plate with accoutrements like potatoes, prosciutto, and ghurkins. If you find yourself Savoyard-ed out (ie, too much cheese, ham, and potatoes), you’re in luck because they serve an excellent and filling veggie bowl, with just the right amount of spice.
Where to Eat in Châtel
Chatel has a bunch of great restaurants, but I do suggest calling ahead to make a reservation. Remember you’re in the Savoyard region, which means lots of hearty mountain food full of potatoes, local cheeses, and lardons or ham. You have to make sure to get at least one Tartiflette, Raclette, and one of the l’Abondance melted cheese dishes to eat the best of the local fare! 🙂
Some of our favorite Châtel restaurants in town are:
les Hors Piste (translates to off-piste) has a great dinner menu, with most everything made from scratch.
le Ficare has a large, traditional French menu serving dishes like escargots and roasted duck.
le Comptoir Bistro for classic bistro fare with a Sovoyard twist.
La Table Savoyard – Get the Raclette, a delicious cheese from the region that is warmed and toasted under a heat lamp until it’s melted and charred, which you then scrape off and eat it with accoutrements.
Crêperie Bretonne La Galettière – If you’re looking for something quick, simple, delicious, and cheap, head to this authentic crêperie. We ate here one night when we didn’t feel like cooking in our apartment, and spent 30 EUR on the two of us, including a bottle of wine!
Le Granier a Pain – the BEST boulangerie and patisserie in town! They have really good individual quiches you can ask for chaud (warmed)
Or, cook at home in your apartment! Renting an apartment is now my favorite way to spend a ski holiday. We rented a modern, luxe feeling apartment in Zermatt with friends and had a wonderful time taking turns hosting dinner. This time it was just the two of us, and we cooked most nights at home in our little rustic alpine apartment in Chatel. It was actually so wonderful – we just stocked up on groceries in town and of course the local bakery for fresh baguettes! Each night after dinner we watched French tv together with French captions on. I was very happy!
If you look reallllly close, you might spot us on our balcony in the middle chalet below!
Casino – a smaller grocery store in town. Right next to the bakery le Granier a Pain
Sherpa – larger grocery store in town
Get There
Drive: Châtel, France is in the Savoy region, just across the Swiss border and a very easy less-than 5 hour drive from Stuttgart. You drive on flat land for about 4hr 30min, and the last 15-20 minutes you drive up the mountain.
Fly: If you’re coming in from afar, you can easily reach chatel by flying into Geneva Airport, and take a shuttle bus straight to Châtel.
Very easy to get here by car or plane!