The Alpine season is not one season. It is four or five distinct periods with different snow, different crowds, different light and prices that vary by a factor of three. Choosing the month is the largest decision of the week, and most people make it by default. Here is what each one is actually like.
Mid-December: the opening
The lifts open, the resort is half awake, and the snow is whatever the first storms delivered. High sectors are usually skiable, low ones sometimes not.
It is quiet, it is inexpensive, and it is a gamble. For a party of strong skiers happy to stay high, it can be excellent value. For a family week, it is the one period we would talk you out of.
Christmas and New Year
The most contested fortnight of the year, and the most expensive by a distance. The resort is full, the restaurants are booked out, and the atmosphere is genuinely festive in a way no other week is.
Snow is usually reliable but not guaranteed at low altitude. What you are paying for is the week itself, not the conditions, and everyone booking it knows that. The dates and the booking window are set out in when to book for Christmas and New Year.
January: the value week
The best-kept arrangement in the Alps. Cold, dry, quiet, and frequently better snow than late December. The same chalet with the same chef and the same team costs a fraction of the festive rate.
The pistes are empty by comparison, the lift queues are short, and the tables that were impossible on the 31st are available on a Tuesday. For anyone whose dates are not fixed by school terms, mid-January buys roughly twice the property for the same money.
- Atmosphere above all — Christmas and New Year, and accept the price.
- Best value — mid-January, or mid-March onward.
- Most reliable snow — February, at any altitude.
- Sun and long days — late March and April, staying high.
- Quiet — January and the last two weeks of the season.
February: the deepest snow, and the crowds
The most reliable conditions of the year, with the deepest base and temperatures cold enough to keep it. It is also when the European school calendars overlap, so the resort is at capacity for two to three weeks.
Prices sit below the festive weeks but well above January. If snow certainty matters more than anything else, this is the month, and it books between October and December.
Four chalets across Meribel and Courchevel.
March: the skier’s month
Longer days, real sun on the terraces, and spring snow that skis beautifully in the morning and softens by afternoon. The crowds thin sharply after the half-term weeks and prices fall back towards January levels.
Altitude starts to matter. High sectors hold their conditions all month; lower villages become variable. It is the month experienced skiers choose when they can, and the one families overlook.
April and Easter
Warm, bright and often empty. Easter is the one peak week that can still be taken late, and above 1,700 metres it is frequently excellent.
Below that, it is a lottery. This is where the sector matters more than the resort name: a chalet in Mottaret at 1,750 metres will still be skiing when one in a low village is not, which is part of why door access and altitude are separate questions.
What it means for the price
Across the domain, for a six- to seven-bedroom staffed chalet: €20,000 to €45,000 in the quiet weeks, €45,000 to €90,000 at February half-term, €55,000 to €110,000 at Christmas and €70,000 to beyond €150,000 over New Year. Courchevel 1850 sits thirty to fifty percent above those bands.
The same house, the same team, three times the price depending on the week you choose. That is the single most useful fact about the Alpine calendar, and it is set out fully in what a luxury chalet actually costs.