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50406_HP_Ski_Ad.indd 1 29/08/2017 14:47

SPACES ARE LIMITED SO IT IS ADVISABLE TO BOOK EARLYFRIDAY: A Friday Service operates from Lyon Airport only, throughout the ski season.

SATURDAY: A regular service operates from all airports every Saturdays throughout the ski season.

SUNDAY: A Sunday service operates from all airports on all Sundays throughout the ski season.

DIRECT SKI TRANSFERS FROM...

LOW COST SKI TRANSFERS

bensbus.co.uk

GENEVA AIRPORTGRENOBLE AIRPORTLYON AIRPORTto Val Thorens, Tignes,Val d’Isere, Les Menuires,Alpe d’Huez, Les 2 Alpes,Les Arcs, La Plagne,Meribel, Mottaret& many more

Prices start from£24.30 pp

SPACES ARE LIMITED SO IT IS ADVISABLE TO BOOK EARLYFRIDAY: A Friday Service operates from Lyon Airport only, throughout the ski season.

SATURDAY: SATURDAY: SATURDAY A regular service operates from all airports every Saturdays throughout the ski season. A regular service operates from all airports every Saturdays throughout the ski season.

SUNDAY: SUNDAY: SUNDAY A Sunday service operates from all airports on all Sundays throughout the ski season. A Sunday service operates from all airports on all Sundays throughout the ski season.

DIRECT SKI TRANSFERS FROM...

LOW COST SKI TRANSFERS

bensbus.co.uk

GENEVA AIRPORTGRENOBLE AIRPORTLYON AIRPORTto Val Thorens, Tignes,to Val Thorens, Tignes,Val d’Isere, Les Menuires,Alpe d’Huez, Les 2 Alpes,Les Arcs, La Plagne,Meribel, Mottaret& many more

Prices start from£24.30 pp

Living the American dream

W hen Robin Craigen goes out with his family to enjoy Steamboat’s famous champagne powder, it must seem like

a far cry from when he started skiing at the age of seven in the highlands of Scotland at Aviemore and Glenshee.

But it was those early experiences that kick-started his love for skiing in snow-covered mountains, and after becoming a ski bum in the Alps he has risen to become a hugely successful entrepreneur.

He and his wife Heather now run Moving Mountains, a luxury vacation home management and rental company, in what is one of Colorado’s best-known ski areas, but the journey he took to get there has had more twists and turns than the new roller-coaster that has just opened in the resort (see American News).

Robin, who is originally from Hampshire, said:

“I learned to ski while spending Christmas holidays near Edinburgh with my grandparents. Like many Brits, I had to rely on plastic slopes the rest of the time. At college, I took on running the ski club, but when I tell Americans about racing on less than 100 yards of plastic, they laugh and say I am making it up!”

Robin went on to complete a business degree in London, but the pull of the mountains was too great, and in 1986 he signed up to manage a bar in Hotel Le Chamois, a jumbo chalet in Alpe d’Huez which was being run by Kings Ski Club.

Robin became well and truly bitten by the travel bug, so, in the summer he headed for the Greek Islands and landed a job managing a small villa rental programme in Cephalonia.

The following winter he returned to the French Alps, this time to Tignes to work for Kings Ski Club again, travelling around Europe gathering

images and notes for their brochures.The next summer he helped them set up Kings

Summertime, and in partnership with the owners organised a windsurfing holiday programme. 

Kings Ski Club changed hands the following spring, so Robin took his summer programme to Owners Abroad, which renamed it Summertime Active Holidays.

Robin said: “This programme flourished, and all was going very well until 1991 when the Gulf War suddenly hit the tour operating business in the Mediterranean. Owners Abroad appealed for a 30 per cent staff reduction and shut down many of their operations. I decided to leave, and sat on a beach in the Greek Islands for three months to contemplate my future.”

Robin’s ski bum survival techniques kicked in and he made a modest living selling friendship bands

From British ski bum to an American success story – Robin Craigen’s journey to the top of the mountain has been quite impressive, as Editor FRANK BALDWIN found out when he went for a chat with him in Steamboat, Colorado

Editor Frank Baldwin enjoys the famous Steamboat powder

W W W . S K I E R A N D S N O W B O A R D E R . C O M 24AMERICA

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Most ski resorts are privileged places of affluence and luxury, hedonistic havens of high adventure. So who would have

thought one would be created to face adversity from the outset, cruelly burdened with ugliness, grim accommodation and dreary atmosphere?

Accordingly, one can only doff one’s ski helmet in unrestrained admiration at the way Les Menuires has overcome these handicaps.

The former ugly duckling of Les Trois Vallées has, by and large, left behind its sad and unattractive younger days to reinvent itself as a resort worthy of welcoming visitors to one of the world’s great linked ski areas.

Skiers and boarders who once would rather have spent a fortnight on the Dendix slopes of an outdoor artificial ski centre in the UK than a single day on those of ‘Les Manures’ are now flocking to Les Menuires.

It’s true that there are still in existence, regrettably, monolithic monstrosities imposed on these lovely mountainsides by architectural lunatics in the 1960s and 70s, but it’s easy now to distance oneself from these and stay in the much more attractive Les Menuires ‘suburbs’, such as Reberty and Les Bruyères.

Showing great wisdom, that’s exactly what I did on my most recent trip to Les Menuires. I was delighted to find myself in Chalet le Chamois, operated by the British firm Powder N Shine.

If you want to enjoy to the full the almost limitless possibilities of the slopes of Les Trois Vallées – Courchevel, Méribel and Val Thorens, as well as the likes of La Tania, Saint Martin de Belleville and even Brides-les-Bains – then many would argue that staying in ‘Les Men’ is your best bet.

It’s right in the centre of things, and nowhere is better placed to make full use of the Three Valleys lift pass.

Chalet Le Chamois is in a sublime position, just by the run down to the main Sunny Express and Les Bruyère lifts, and you can jump from the balcony to the best table on the terrace of one of Les Men’s best slopeside restaurants, La Ferme.

The chalet has a sauna, and you can sit in the hot-tub on the balcony and drink in panoramic views of Cime de Caron and Pointe de la Masse. It also came with an excellent chef, Sean, and efficient, cheerful hosting in the shape of Heather and Layla.

Francesca Pangli and her husband Steve founded Powder N Shine eight years ago, after they made the momentous decision that life in a ski resort had the edge over careers in the financial sectors of teeming cities.

The strange thing about vast linked ski areas is that they can bring about in visitors a misguided idea of what makes a great ski day.

Many feel that, just because they can, they must head to the most far-flung corner of the network

and then spend most of the day fretting about getting back again before their vital lift connection closes. And in the process, they never properly explore the fabulous skiing directly on their doorstep.

Big interlinked areas, designed to give skiers and boarders the opportunity to try a huge variety of runs, can often be totally self-defeating in that hordes of skiers merely clog the thoroughfares joining the composite parts of the network.

I’m probably as guilty as many others in this respect. So, hugely familiar as I am with the Three Valleys, it was with great joy that I became, under the guidance of Francesca, much more intimately acquainted with the slopes of Les Menuires than ever before.

The high runs from Pointe de la Masse or Mont de la Chambre were in great shape, and the lower runs down to Saint Martin de Belleville had plenty of cover. We even revelled in the ecstasy of ‘Firnschnee’ (corn snow) on some runs.

We also enjoyed, in a vicarious sense, the surreal vision of several thousand suitably lubricated Poles in fancy dress cavorting at a slopeside party as part of Polish National Ski Week.

Les Menuires, which is winging its way by the minute ever higher up my personal all-time hits chart of resorts I want to get back to as soon as possible, enhanced its image further by producing, as well as great skiing, wonderful mountain lunches at La Ferme de Reberty, Chalet du Sunny and Le Corbeleys, down at Saint Martin de Belleville.

Another pleasing aspect of this trip was that it avoided all contact with air travel. We travelled down by train – Eurostar to Paris and then TGV to Chambéry. The homeward journey had a special treat in store – back from Moûtiers direct to St Pancras with no change in Paris.

The only trouble with continental rail travel is that it’s too efficient – well, too fast anyway. One hopes to sit back in comfort and gaze at the countryside drifting by. But at 200 mph it goes by in such a blur you can’t even read the signs of sleepy country stations as they flash by.

“Where are we?” asked a travelling companion. “No idea,” I said. “All I can tell you is that we’re about 100 kilometres further on than we were when you asked where we were.

“Does that help?”“No.”

Exploring massive ski areas such as Les Trois Vallées may seem an attractive proposition, but you should not ignore what’s right on your chalet doorstep, says ROB FREEMAN

There once was an ugly duckling…

T R A V E L F A C T SFor more information about Powder N Shine go to:www.powdernshine.com

Rail travel from St Pancras International was organised through SNCF:uk.voyages-sncf.com/en

Transfers from rail station to resort was with Skiidy Gonzales:www.skiidygonzales.com

More information on Les Menuires at:en.lesmenuires.com

Pole dancers: Party time on the piste for the Polish contingent

W W W . S K I E R A N D S N O W B O A R D E R . C O M 8SKI BUSINESS

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on the beach. “Yep,” said Robin, “that was possible in 1991.” Then a chance encounter saw him being asked to deliver a yacht for a former employer – and Robin’s next adventure began.

“Having developed a passion for dinghy sailing while growing up near Hayling Island on the south coast of England, adapting to bigger boats was like learning to drive a big truck – just a few more things to think about,” he said.

“I returned to the UK and went to sailing school to take my Coastal Skipper and Yachtmaster qualifications. Then I set off for the Canary Islands to ‘hitch-hike’ across the Atlantic.

“I found my ride on the second day of asking around the docks and joined the crew of War Baby, a famous boat owned by Warren Brown, a wealthy Bermudian businessman.”

Three weeks later, Robin was in Antigua, and ‘hitched’ another lift to the British Virgin Islands, where he landed his first charter as a captain.

He said: “In 1994, having spent a few years working and racing on yachts, I became captain of a beautiful and very busy charter yacht called the Endless Summer II, with my girlfriend Heather. It was during this time that we hatched the plan to ‘move mountains’ for chalet guests in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado.

“We married in 1996, and in 1997 purchased a six-bedroom home in Steamboat Springs and launched our new catered chalet business in December 1998.

“A lean snowfall meant we had a rocky start, but we struck gold when we hosted the editor of Ski magazine, who featured us as an ‘Inn of the Month’. The phone began to ring off the hook.”

The couple took on a second chalet, and over the next few years this grew to eight. “We doubled the number of homes we offered in 2007, and doubled again the following year. Soon we had over 30 properties,” explained Robin.

“In 2008, as One Steamboat Place – primarily a fractional ownership development by Timbers Resorts – was under construction, the owners approached us because of our knowledge of luxury lodging and asked us to assist with managing a rental programme for Whole Ownership residences. 

“When the building opened in 2009 we had two

A M E R I C A N N E W SSNOWMASS: A $600m transformation of Snowmass Base Village in Colorado will include a new central resort plaza with an ice rink, a new hotel, and a leisure centre with a five-storey climbing wall and hot tubs. The development should be largely completed in time for the 2018/19 season.

BRECKENRIDGE: The Peak 10 Falcon SuperChair has been upgraded from a quad to a six-seater for the 2017/18 ski season. The upgrade is part of a general improvement scheme at the Colorado ski area, which included the opening of Pioneer Crossing, a new 490-seat restaurant on Peak 7 last season. Breckenridge Ski Resort has announced a ski season opening date of Friday, 10 November.

SPOKANE: A new chairlift is being installed in the Mt Spokane ski area in Washington State. The 600m-long ‘Red Chair’ has been purchased from Bridger Bowl in Montana and will open up 80 acres of north-west-facing slopes. It is hoped the new lift will be fully operational at the end of next year.

DEER VALLEY: A company fronted by the private equity firm KSL Capital Partners has purchased Deer Valley in Utah. But snowboarders will not be happy that the new owners say they have no plans to change the resort’s ‘skiers only’ policy.

STEAMBOAT: The longest mountain coaster in North America will be open in Steamboat this winter. The individual sleds slide along a tubular stainless-steel rail system which rises up to 40ft above the ground with dips, waves, turns and 360-degree circles. Riders can control the sled’s speed through a braking system.

ultra-luxury residences for rental. Since this time, our portfolio at One Steamboat Place has grown to 40, and today our company, Moving Mountains, is recognised as the luxury market leader with almost 80 homes and residences. We are now looking for opportunities to grow outside of Steamboat.”

But how do he and his family feel about Steamboat itself? Robin, who is now 54, said: “Even after all this time, Steamboat continues to exceed our expectations. It’s a family-friendly resort that offers some of the best skiing in North America.

“My personal favourite run on a powder day is to skim down The Ridge from the top of Morningside Lift, a wide-open run speckled with evergreens, drop into Flying-Z, and then get back to the Storm Peak Lift via Drop Out.

“I do love to ski here and still get out regularly, although my new discovery has been skinning-up the mountain for an early morning workout and taking the first powder run down the hill, usually getting me home by 8am. Now that’s a fun way to start your day!”

T R A V E L F A C T S

Frank Baldwin flew to Denver, Colorado, with British Airways. His accommodation at One Steamboat Place – www.onesteamboatplace.com – was arranged by Moving Mountains – www.movingmountains.com

During his stay, he visited the Strawberry Park Hot Springs – www.strawberryhotsprings.com – and went horse riding at Del’s Triangle 3 Ranch – www.steamboathorses.com

For more information on Steamboat, go to: www.steamboat.com

W W W . S K I E R A N D S N O W B O A R D E R . C O M25 AMERICA

Robin and Heather Craigen out on the mountain with daughter Maddie, son Chili and their dog Skadi

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