Méribel. The heart of the Three Valleys, from Chambéry or the altiport without a wasted hour.

Méribel is a string of settlements up the Vallée des Allues, the middle valley of the Three Valleys. Les Allues is the original Savoyard village down at around 1,100 metres. Méribel Village sits at about 1,400, Méribel Centre, the chalet resort most people mean, at about 1,450, and Méribel Mottaret higher up at about 1,750, where the lifts are closest to the door and the snow lasts longest.

The reason people choose it over its neighbours is geography. Méribel is in the middle of the Three Valleys, with Courchevel over one ridge and Val Thorens over the other, and around 600 kilometres of linked pistes reachable without ever taking a car. For a mixed group that is a real advantage: everyone skis what suits them and lunch still happens in the same place.

Which village you are in matters chiefly for the last fifteen minutes of the transfer and for how far you walk in ski boots, and both are worth settling before the cars are booked.

Méribel has its own altiport above the resort at around 1,717 metres, with a short sloping runway of roughly 406 metres that aircraft land uphill and take off downhill. It is shorter than the better known strip at Courchevel and subject to the same kind of limits: mountain qualified crews or a site authorisation, daylight only, and operations that stop when the weather says so. Business jets cannot use it.

In practice that makes it a helicopter destination. From Chambéry the flight is about twenty five minutes and from Geneva around thirty five, in daylight and acceptable visibility, which on a congested Saturday is the difference between arriving before lunch and arriving after dark. Ask about it at the same time as the aircraft, because capacity goes in the same weeks the chalets do. If the helicopter is not flying, the plan is the road, and everything above Moûtiers climbs the same valley. See helicopter charter.

The season runs from the start of December to the middle of April, with the Three Valleys links open from 5 December 2026 to 18 April 2027. New Year and the February half-term weeks fill first, and they fill for the aircraft, the helicopter, the chalets and the cars at roughly the same moment in the autumn.

The weeks that experienced visitors quietly prefer are the middle of January, when the snow is usually good and the valley is empty, and the second half of March, when the days are long and the roads behave. Easter is a lottery decided by altitude, which is one more argument for Mottaret over Les Allues if the dates are late.

Whatever week you take, the shape of the arrangement is the same: an aircraft into Chambéry or Geneva, a fallback agreed before departure, and either a road transfer up the valley or a helicopter into the altiport in daylight. One contact at Odyssey holds all of it together, including the part where the plan changes at eleven in the morning.