Claviere (Via Lattea) Sneeuwverwachting

We stayed in the Grand Claviere Hotel from 9th to 16th February. The hotel is exceptionally good value for money and well situated for the pistes (about 100 metres to walk down to them in the morning, and almost back to the door at the end of the day). Claviere is a fairly small resort but there’s a good mixture of blue and red runs. There’s one black run back to the resort which is a soft touch, but no green runs for complete beginners. Unless you are in the latter category the Claviere lift pass would be insufficient to keep you interested. Unfortunately, there’s a proliferation of lift passes, which is quite confusing. We bought the joint Claviere/Mongenevre pass which gives unlimited skiing in both resorts and one day in the Milky Way. There’s also a Milky Way pass which has unlimited skiing there (Claviere included) with one day in Montgenevre. It’s a bit of a trek over to Sauze or Sestriere and however fast you ski you won’t do it in less than an hour as most of your time is spent on lifts. Getting to Montgenevre is easy (1 lift) and getting back is simple along the bottom piste, although you will need to do a bit of poling. The return via Colleto Verde takes quite a while (slow lift) but the skiing from there is excellent. We found there was a sufficient variety of runs in Montgenevre to just about keep us happy for a week. In fact, the resort has one of the best and longest green runs in any resort I’ve been to – right from the top of the Gondrans lift back to Montgenevere. Generally, there were no queues for lifts in Claviere and although the pistes were busier in Montgenevre, the longest we had to wait was a couple of minutes. One unfortunate side effect is that the lift company has not felt the need to update some of the chairs e.g. the Chalvet and Observatoire chairlifts were pretty slow. Overall, Claviere (+ lift pass of your choice) would be a good choice for intermediates. On its own, the resort is really only suitable for beginners.