Méribel Mission

Ski

7 Dec 2009

The ski town Méribel is in the French Alps and is a huge resort, with endless kilometres of piste and many accommodation, restaurant and facilities on offer.

The mission here was simple - try to live our teenage dreams and stay out in the Alps as long as possible, having fun and skiing as much as we could.

We chose Méribel as it’s big, part of Les Trois Vallées, aka the Three Valleys. The area offers many options across six resorts and confusingly, four valleys. Also, there’s a huge British population, so we hoped our lack of French skills would be less of an issue. 

On a personal ski level, I had progressed my skiing over multiple week long trips to Verbier, and needed miles under my belt, so this huge area of very accessible intermediate pistes would serve me well.

As a young 18 year old who’d fallen in love with skiing and the mountains, I had little interest in going to university and planned to head for the Alps and live the life. 

Along with two school friends, Tom and Luke, who also wanted to live the dream, we packed our bags and got on a train heading for London. From here we switched to the Eurostar which would take us across to Paris. We then shlepped across the city and boarded a TGV service that would take us to Bourg-Saint-Maurice in the south of France. Tom and I had been on a chalet cooking course a few months prior, looking to boost our chances of a job, and the couple who ran the business have chalets in the Alps so offered to pick us up and transfer us up to resort. It was a pretty long and exhausting journey, with suitcases and a two metre long ski bag, but we were getting closer to living our teenage dreams.

None of us had jobs lined up, but we’d booked an apartment for two weeks and would see how it goes. 

Plans were loose, but passion and excitement for an adventure was high. We were heading off and would try out best to make it work.

 

The following weeks leading up to Christmas mainly involved spending many hours in pubs and bars, making friends and connections and hoping someone would have a job opening we could fill.

On good weather days we would go skiing, buying single day ski passes as we hoped we’d get a job imminently that would provide a season long pass. 

On bad weather days we camp out at various notice boards around the town waiting for a job ad to be pinned up and we could be the first to jump on it.

We spent many nights in Dicks T Bar and the Tav, where we also stayed for a few nights in between accommodations. 

Starting in an apartment in town, with a bunk bed and sofa for the three of us, we ended up renting out our floor space to a couple of Aussies we’d met. We cooked for them and did trips down the valley to bigger supermarkets with out empty suitcases. We’d hitch out and back and cook three course meals that we learnt on a chalet cooking course. 

Eventually my time sitting tight next to notice boards came good. I got a job as a cleaner in a chalet for a British family. They were doctors from London and had two children. They stayed for six weeks and skied everyday, so I’d come in a clean up after breakfast, working 9am-12pm and they left me a €50 note on the side each morning. I’d then ski in the afternoon and head to the pub. I did this every day and I thought it was a great deal.

Tom, Luke and I, with the Aussies in tow, all then moved up to a larger apartment up the hill that was cheaper and the Aussie’s actually had beds to sleep on. The Aussies visas were soon up though, and they headed home. We stayed on and tried to keep the dream alive. 

When my six week job stint came to an end and I struggled to find any new work, I spent a few weeks kicking around town, then plans shifted and I moved over to Courchevel, a neighbouring resort in the Three Valleys. It was February now and my friend from home, Alice, was doing a season in a hotel in Courch, so I hoped her connections could help me find somewhere to live and work.

She was super helpful and managed to find me a floor a floor to sleep on for a month or so with the local newspaper journalist. He was a local character, with a huge Mohawk but he understood my situation and I paid just €5 per night. The underfloor heating made it a pretty decent deal to me.

After a month or so there, money was drying up and the end of the winter was in sight, so finding another job seemed unlikely. But I’d scratched my itch.

Many lessons were learnt, a lot of fun was had, and I loved the bubble of alpine living.

Our dreams didn’t exactly materialise, but we had a lot of fun and I became more independent from the experience.

The reality is that the ski holidays I enjoyed in Verbier with my Uncle were a far cry from seasonaire life and working and living in resort is pretty challenging and ski time is precious.

Most people I met told me to go home and get a degree, so it started to click that what my family were encouraging me to do was indeed the right option. I could always come back and do a ski season after a degree. This experience spurred me on to return to the UK and get a degree, which was a good a decision as any. I still wanted the full winter seasonaire experience, so I’d be back…

This experience way key for me growing up and set the tone of adventure travel and pursuing snow trips through university and then the rest of my life. Spoiler alert - I went to university, got a degree, then did a full winter season in Verbier! For more on that, head to the Paragliding Verbier page.

Further info

See more at: les3vallees.com, meribel.net.

Related reading:
- Free Skiing - How to Adapt to the Mountain, Jimmy Odén
- Powder: The Greatest Ski Runs on the Planet, Patrick Thorne
- 30 Years in a White Haze, Dan Egan & Eric Wilbur
- The Art of Shralpinism: Lessons from the Mountains, Jeremy Jones

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