My idea is for the family — all five of us — to put some serious mileage under our skis. Together we’ll swoop the glorious length of Tamarro red run, then snake through the forest over to distant El Forn. The best lunch stop I can think of is a sun-drenched terrace overlooking the frozen Llac dels Pessons; after that, there’s the Coll Blanc above Pas de la Casa to head up to, before cruising for miles on the wide, empty slopes of Serrat Pinos.
“But we want to do the mogul fields, the jumps and the natural half-pipe again,” declare Toby and Sebastian, our 13 and 11-year-old sons. My plans are quickly waylaid as the boys duck under the safety ropes and disappear down the mountain. Still, the idea of going on a full day’s there-and-back skiing expedition — in the way that you can in the Trois Vallées or the Portes du Soleil — is as alluring as it is amazing.
Amazing, because a few years ago we spent a claustrophobic week in this same resort, sometimes queuing for an hour for ageing lifts serving just a few dangerously overcrowded slopes. However, for the past two seasons, five of Andorra’s ski areas have been linked together to form the vast Grand Valira, with access to 192km (120 miles) of prepared pistes. That is about the same as Les Arcs or Cervinia in Italy. And to go with it there has been huge investment in new high-speed chairlifts, artificial snow-making and piste-grooming equipment.
We are staying in Soldeu, Andorra’s flagship resort. It is not a pretty place, with no centre or heart to it. Instead, shops, bars, hotels, half-built blocks and cranes are strung along a busy main road. But our hotel, the brand new, spaciously minimalist four-star Piolets Park, delights us all — especially my wife, Hennie, and 15-year old daughter, Iona. They make a beeline for the spa with its heated pool, sauna, beauty parlour and scented treatment rooms. There is also a large outdoor hot tub of the kind that is standard in the Rockies but a rarity in Europe. Another feature adopted from the North American ski resort is the helpfulness of resort staff. At the main gondola station, for example, smiling young men load guests’ skis as they marshal the queue.
Toby and Sebastian are veterans of numerous kids’ clubs and ski schools. However, this time they have made an unexpected request: “Can’t we just free ski with you instead?” The pair have the energy of hungry huskies and the arrangement turns out to be as tiring for me as it is challenging.
Iona, on the other hand, has a completely different agenda. She is a gentler, less-experienced skier, but more important, she is hoping to find a bit of social life. Accordingly, she joins a teenagers’ instruction group. One strength of Soldeu’s only ski school is that pupils are divided by age as well as ability. Another is that there is instruction by native English speakers. A weakness is that there are 12 pupils to one instructor which, in my view, is too many to learn much.
“So what? We have a really cool time,” says Iona. Her group meets in the afternoon and she gets in with a young crowd. After-dinner craic seems to take the form of gatherings in one Soldeu hotel or another, organised by multiple text messaging. A couple of times a party of them catches the bus down the valley to Canillo, where there is an Olympic-size skating rink and cool café. As parents, Hennie and I feel that she is in a reasonably safe, friendly environment.
The week proceeds with us making full use of the Grand Valira’s fantastic variety. A few times we ski together; mostly, we split into kamikaze and commonsensical factions and meet for lunch. There are three or four excellent mountain restaurants in the Grand Valira — one Moroccan, the others serving Catalan dishes such as the ubiquitous botifarra amb mongetes — a hot sausage served with white beans — at fairly reasonable prices.
“Andorra has repositioned itself as a quality destination. We are no longer the bargain basement of European skiing,” says Marta Rotes, director of marketing for the Grand Valira. True enough, the bargain basements of skiing are now beginner-friendly resorts in Eastern Europe — especially Bulgaria and Slovenia — where a half-board stay in a four-star hotel in the peak (new year and February half term) weeks costs about £500, including flights. This compares with around £900 in Soldeu and £1,400 for Méribel or Val d’Isère.
The Pyrenees are not as high as the Alps and have nothing to compare with the towering majesty of Mont Blanc or the Matterhorn. But the extent and diversity of the Grand Valira is a huge plus for our family of go-for-it teenagers. It certainly helps that, while the snow cover changes from plentiful to just about adequate as the week progresses, we are blessed with six days’ sun.
The Piolets Park, five minutes’ walk from the gondola station, exceeds our expectations in several ways. The buffets dinners always feature delicious fresh fish or seafood — a requirement of any hotel hosting the wealthy of Barcelona, as this one does.
Soldeu’s hotel bar and tame disco-based nightlife could hardly have suited the teen scene better — even if for Hennie and me, après-ski never really gets off the nursery slopes. We occasionally wander into downtown Soldeu but find the bars smoky and brash, playing music so loud that we can’t even play at chatting each other up.
On our final night, billboards outside Fat Albert’s bar advertise a live gig by a band engagingly called “The Dog’s Bollocks”. Very crude, but the name does — in the kindest sense of the idiom — sum up the prevailing family view of skiing in Andorra.
Need to know
Martin Symington and family travelled with Crystal Holidays (0870 4055047, www.crystalski.co.uk). A week’s half board at the four-star Hotel Piolets Park and Spa starts at £529, rising to £909 over new year and half-term week (departing February 12). Reductions for children under 12 sharing vary from 5-25 per cent, depending on dates. Prices include flights to Toulouse from Gatwick or from various regional airports (at supplements of £10- £39) and transfers.
Lift Passes: A six-day Gran Valira pass costs from £133; from £99 for children under 12; under-6s free.
Ski School: Five three-hour group lessons at Soldeu Ski School (00 376 890 591, www.grandvalira.com) cost from £68; children from £64.
Further information: Ski Andorra (805 200, www.skiandorra.ad).
What's hot in the cold
BEST SNOW
Winter Park, a short hop from Denver airport, is living up to its name with some great Colorado snow — around 50 inches at the top of the mountain. The family-friendly resort has plenty of beginner and intermediate terrain, and Mary Jane mountain has some of America’s best moguls. Igluski.com (020 8542 6658, www.igluski.com) has a week’s B&B at the town’s Olympia Lodge for £479, departing December 24 from Gatwick.
BEST DEAL
It may seem rather early to be thinking about winter 2006/07 but Thomson (0870 8880254, www.thomson-ski.co.uk) is enticing skiers to sign up with discounts of £100 per person if you book online before December 31. The best deal is a week’s self-catering at the La Daille Soleil Apartments in Val d’Isère for £39 — yes, £39 — per person (based on four sharing), departing December 9, 2006, including ferry from Dover to Calais.
IN THE KNOW
Visitors to the Colorado resort of Telluride can now earn frequent flyer miles as they ski. Anyone staying for more than four nights is loaned a GPS device that is worn on the arm. This keeps track of the vertical distance you ski during your stay and you can earn ten miles in Continental’s OnePass programme for every 1,000 feet skied. An average skier should be able to pick up 250 OnePass miles a day.
CORRECTION
The resort of Alta near Salt Lake City, Utah, operates a “skiers only” policy and bans snowboarders, contary to our article last week.
