Meribel - Mottaret Skiing Heaven?
 Feb 15th, 2004
Advantages:
Location, Piste Area, Snow
Disadvantages:
Night life
Recommendable:
Yes
Detailed rating:
Value for Money
Sightseeing
Shopping
Nightlife
Ease of getting around
more
Review rated by 12 Ciao members on average: very helpful 
This review received a counterstatement by a party concerned
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Accomodation I said in the Le Hameua Mottaret appartments, these are located right at the upper most end of the Mottaret resort, just a short ski away from lifts to take you away on your days skiing. With the ability to ski to and from your door, Lets be honest thou it is never door to door, it was a short 1 min work to the main slope area. So i couldnt really complain much about that.
Room:
The accomodation was of adequate quality, a simple no frills study, which i've come to expect on a self-catered ski holiday. The 2 of us were in a study to sleep 5 so there was ample room, thou i wouldnt really of recommend it with 5, toilet and shower facilties would of been hard to cope with. Facilities provided in the room are as follows.
Toilet
Bath/Shower (sink)
All cutlery plates etc.
With full occupancy (5), you have enough cutlery for 2 full meals.
Dishwasher. (Excellent no more hours spent washing up, 2 free tablets provided enough for the one wash we did)
Oven and Hob
Ample enough facilities to cook simple easy to eat meals, such as pasta, burgers etc. Accomodation problem solving:
Whilst in resort our toilet broke 3 times. The first time was dealt with within 4 hours, i cant be more accurate as the toilet was broken on arrival, and we reported this at 6:00pm before we went to our welcome meeting, but was fixed when we got back at 10:00pm. The second time the toilet was fixed with 30min of us reporting the problem. I can only assume the toilet was fixed so swiftly the first time. On the 3rd time of breaking we were getting a little sick of reporting the problem, it was only the 2nd day. So we thought we'd fix it our selfs, simple enough, we removed the lid of the toilet and left it off, was simply a problem with the toilet filling up with water. No more toilet problems for us.
Night-Life:
As Mottaret is a smal resort some 5-10 minutes further up the mountain than meribel it is fairly self contained, with a limited number of pubs, and one nightclub. Very expensive in my opinion, as are most ski resort night clubs, i found there to be ample bars to keep us busy. If your looking for a lads holiday, looking for ladies, i wouldnt recommend coming here, was mostly full of families or couples. On a plus note the night life in meribel is slight better and is a free bus ride away. Meribus runs from before i awoke each day 9am isj. Until the last bus upto Mottaret at 11:50pm, or there abouts.
Plenty of bars to go around in meribel, but in my opinion not quite as good as Val D'isere. (See my other report for info on Val D'isere)
On to the important stuff....
Ski - Area; By far the best ski area in europe upwards of 600km of pistes to cover, damn near impossible to cover in one weeks skiing. Only area that i could possible compare this to is Espace Killy (tignes/Val D'isere)
With mottaret located right bang in the middle of the 3 vallees. Val Thorens was but 2 sort lifts up one side of the mountain, and Courcheavel was one short lift ride up the other side of the mountain. I have to admit im an excellent piste map reader, so was able to get my self out of even the difficult moments where you end up getting lost whilst skiing during the day. As im sure you will admit this is easy enough to do, whilst skiing the days away. I managed to do it on 2 occasions this year. 2nd time more scary as i was up in the clouds, and could see about 5m each way. (My tip if you have time in this occasion is to ski down to resort if possible, and then plan your route home, if not possible, go to the nearest manned lift and ask the person working, most speak good enough english to get you back.
Snow conditions were amazing for the week i was in resort from 7th until 15th Feb 2004. Maybe got slightly icey as the week went on, but all lifts were open, all runs were open. Skiing for all abilities, green to blacks run a plenty. Green Piste - Novice
Blue Piste - Begineer
Red Piste - Intermidate
Black Piste - Advanced
The above is just a guide line of the ability level require before you should attempt to do each piste. Do beware from resort to resort the difficulity of different blues, red, blacks will and does vary more so from country to country. In my opinion and French Red, is often like an Austrian Black. Many will probably disagree. If in doubt about a run DO NOT SKI it. Better safe than sorry.
Almost forgot pictures to follow, once uploaded. Est Wed/Thurs this week. (Please suggest any additional comments i can add on to my review and i will be happy to try and enter.)
Please disregard my ski school rating, as i didnt require any ski school whislt in resort.
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16.02.2004 00:37
Great review! If I ever consider going skiing I'll consider going here
15.02.2004 23:41
I'd love to go on a skiing trip but I think by the sound of it I'd want a different resort!! good op, Rob
15.02.2004 23:37
Always wanted to go skiing, sounds great! Maybe one day - Tanya :o)