Skiing at Your Own Pace: A Different Way to Experience Champoluc
There comes a point when the perfect ski holiday doesn’t necessarily mean being first on the lift every morning and skiing until your legs tell you it’s time to stop.
You still love the mountains, you still want great skiing, but perhaps you also want time for a long lunch, a walk through the snow, a morning in the spa or simply the freedom to look outside after breakfast and decide what you fancy doing that day.
If you’re able to travel outside the school holidays and busy peak weeks, Champoluc is a wonderful place to do exactly that.
Discover a quieter side of the mountains
Champoluc has always been a little different from the big, purpose-built Alpine resorts.
It’s a traditional Italian mountain village, surrounded by the spectacular peaks of the Monterosa, with restaurants, independent shops, hotels and cafés running through the village rather than one enormous resort complex.
Weekends naturally bring more Italian skiers up from Milan, Turin and the surrounding area, but during the week the pace changes.
The village becomes quieter, the mountain feels wonderfully peaceful, and you have time to enjoy both.
That’s why we think Champoluc works particularly well for guests who have a little more flexibility over when they travel.
You don’t have to fit your holiday around a Saturday-to-Saturday package, either. At Ski Champoluc, we build your holiday around you, with flexible arrival dates and stays ranging from a few nights to a full week or longer.
And once you’re here, your days can be just as flexible.
What could a slower day in Champoluc look like?
Imagine waking up and deciding that skiing can wait for a few hours.
If you’re staying at Relais des Glaciers, your morning could begin in its heated outdoor pool. Step into warm water surrounded by cold mountain air, enjoy the whirlpool jets and views towards Monte Rosa, and suddenly getting to the first lift doesn’t seem quite so important.
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Follow it with a leisurely breakfast and you’re ready to head out – but not necessarily onto the slopes.
Instead, pull on your walking boots and explore the village.
Walk from Champoluc to Frachey
One of our favourite gentle walks takes you out of Champoluc and towards Frachey.
The route follows the Evançon stream before passing through Pian Villy, a beautiful wooded area between Champoluc and Frachey.
Hidden amongst the trees you’ll discover an open-air collection of wooden sculptures created by artists from the Aosta Valley. The path continues through the woods towards Frachey and is groomed during the winter, making it a lovely way to experience the valley away from the ski slopes.
There’s something special about walking here in winter. Snow in the trees, the river beside you and the mountains above – with absolutely no reason to hurry.
Make lunch an event
By the time you reach Frachey, you’ve earned lunch.
La Grange is a restaurant that many of our customers absolutely love – as do we!
Set in an old traditional mountain building in Frachey, it has a sunny terrace overlooking the valley and serves a mixture of Aosta Valley dishes and contemporary Italian food.
This isn’t a day for grabbing a quick panini.
Find a table, order something delicious, have a glass of wine and enjoy a proper Italian mountain lunch.
And don’t look at your watch.
Fancy skiing now?
This is where travelling at a different pace really comes into its own.
After lunch, you might decide that the snow looks far too good to ignore.
That’s fine.
Give the Ski Champoluc team a call and we can help get you back to your skis. You can spend a few hours enjoying the mountain rather than feeling you needed to commit to an entire day’s skiing before you’d even finished breakfast.
Or perhaps lunch was particularly good and skiing can wait until tomorrow.
That’s fine too.
Wander back through Champoluc, browse the shops, stop for a coffee or aperitivo, or return to the hotel and spend another hour in the spa.
There are no points for squeezing the maximum number of runs into every day.
And when you do want to ski…
Of course, we wouldn’t suggest coming to Champoluc and not making the most of the skiing.
Champoluc forms part of the Monterosa Ski area, linking the valleys of Champoluc, Gressoney and Alagna.
It’s big mountain skiing, with long runs, spectacular scenery and some exceptional off-piste terrain. But one of the things our returning guests love most is how different it feels from many of Europe’s better-known ski resorts.
Outside the busiest periods, you can often spend far more of your day actually skiing and far less of it standing in lift queues.
You might ski across towards Gressoney one day, explore further towards Alagna another, and on the next decide that a couple of hours on your favourite Champoluc runs followed by a long lunch is quite enough.
When you have the luxury of time, there’s no need to do everything at once.
A ski holiday built around you
This is perhaps our favourite thing about this kind of Champoluc holiday.
There doesn’t need to be a timetable.
Ski when the conditions are great. Take a day off when your legs need it. Have lunch somewhere wonderful. Walk through the village. Spend an afternoon in the spa. Sit in the sunshine with a coffee and watch everyone else ski past.
And if you wake up to fresh snow?
Change the plan completely.
Our team lives and works here, so we’re around to help with recommendations, transport around the resort and all those little decisions that are much easier when you can simply ask someone who knows Champoluc.
If you’re no longer tied to school holidays or fixed travel dates, we’d particularly recommend talking to us about quieter weeks and flexible arrival dates.
Tell us how you like to spend your time in the mountains and we’ll build your Champoluc holiday around you.