The Megève ski pass: which one, and what does it cost?

It’s the most administrative question of the whole stay, and yet one of those that most changes the week. In Megève, the choice of pass doesn’t depend on your budget: it depends on the number of days you’ll genuinely ski. And I’ll be frank, in Megève, that number is nearly always lower than what my clients announce in January.

Indicative adult rates: they change every season, and I always confirm the exact figure when booking. What matters is the gap: over a week, for a family of four, the choice between the local pass and the widest one adds up to a sum that is no longer symbolic. That’s precisely why the question deserves three minutes’ thought rather than a counter purchase on Sunday morning.

• Megève only, the resort’s own sectors: Rochebrune, Mont d’Arbois, Le Jaillet, Le Christomet, Cote 2000. That’s already a lot of skiing, and amply enough for a beginner, a child in lessons, or a two- to three-day stay.
• Évasion Mont-Blanc, the default pass, and the one I take nine times out of ten. It adds Combloux, La Giettaz, Saint-Gervais, Saint-Nicolas-de-Véroce and Les Contamines-Montjoie: several hundred kilometres of pistes and, above all, the ability to change slope when the snow or the light isn’t good at home.
• Mont-Blanc Unlimited, the wide pass, which additionally opens the Chamonix valley and its great cable cars. It only makes sense for strong skiers, and even then: I nearly always advise taking it for a day’s excursion rather than for the week.

• A family with children in lessons: Évasion Mont-Blanc. The children ski in Megève with their instructor, and the parents have somewhere to escape to for a day on another slope.
• A solid skier who wants terrain: Évasion for the week, plus one Mont-Blanc Unlimited day placed on the finest day of the week. It’s the best pleasure-to-spend ratio I know here.
• A genuine beginner: Megève only, and most of your progress will come from an instructor, not a wider pass.
• A non-skier, the pedestrian pass. Megève is one of the rare resorts where spending the day at altitude without skis makes sense: you go up by gondola, lunch facing Mont Blanc, come back down. Many of my clients don’t ski and have a perfect week.
• A two- or three-night stay, buy by the day. On a short stay, the week pass never pays for itself.

The Megève ski area is split into several sectors that don’t all connect on skis. In other words: your pass opens up a lot of kilometres, but it doesn’t magically carry you from one slope to another. You have to come down, take a shuttle or a car, and go back up.

That’s why I always repeat the same thing: in Megève, a driver dropping you at the right lift for the day’s sector is worth more than a wider pass you won’t exploit. The pass opens the area; it’s the logistics that let you use it.

• Online, in advance. Rates are generally better than at the counter, and you avoid the Sunday-morning queue, which, along with Saturday on the road, is the second great waste of time on a ski holiday.
• Have everyone’s ID photographs ready, children included. It’s the formality that holds everybody up at the desk.
• The pass sits on a reusable card, with a small deposit. Keep it from one season and one resort to the next: it saves you ten minutes every year.
• We collect the passes before you arrive and leave them at the chalet with the equipment. You click in on Monday morning without going near a ticket office.

Buying six days and skiing four. Megève is a resort where people ski less than elsewhere, and that isn’t a flaw, it’s its very nature. You lunch at length up the mountain, you go down and stroll the village, you take a spa day, there’s a day of bad weather. Over seven nights, most of my clients ski four to five days.

So look at the non-consecutive-day formulas, or buy day by day and decide each morning. It’s the only advice in this article that will save you money, and it comes from someone with no interest in you skiing less.