Guide de hors-piste particulier

One point that is not administrative pedantry: a ski instructor and a mountain guide do not do the same job and are not licensed for the same thing. As soon as you leave the secured area for any length of time you need a guide, and we never blur the two. That said, Courchevel's off-piste is of a different nature from that of the wooded resorts of Haute-Savoie. Here you ski high, well above the treeline: wide open bowls, north faces that hold powder for days after a fall, and combes reached by walking twenty minutes from the top of a lift. It is magnificent and it is exposed, the absence of trees that makes the descent so beautiful is also what makes the terrain avalanche-prone. Two consequences follow, and we stand by them: the guide sets the route in the morning, from the bulletin and from what he saw the day before, and he decides, not the client. And on days of poor visibility he will take you lower, into the larches above Le Praz, rather than into a wide bowl where the relief has stopped being readable.