Saint Gervais Mont Blanc is a charming alpine town, and as a spa resort, has attracted tourists since 1806. It became a ski resort as well with the opening of the first cable car to the Bettex as early as 1936! It has remained very French even into the Twenty First Century, and, despite huge recent foreign property investment, it remains a relatively undiscovered gem nestling between it's better known sisters, Chamonix and Megève, with an impressive landscape wherever you look. The main 'Voie Royale' climbers route and the summit of the Mont Blanc (4810 metres) are all in the commune of St Gervais. Above all, this a very friendly, Savoyard 'living' village, not frequented by the package tour industry and with one of the prettiest ski areas anywhere in the Alps.
Saint Gervais Mont Blanc
The main ski area of St Gervais has 130kms of pistes, with 36 lifts spread over the open spaces of the Mont Joly and the tree lined slopes of Mont Rosset. It links seamlessly into the Megève system, and the Evasion Mont Blanc ski pass covers 430 kms of pistes with a hands-free skipass set up. The slopes are accessed by a fast, 20-person gondola from the edge of the resort to Le Bettex. The new 'WOSP' snow park under the fast Mont Joux chairlift provides excellent entertainment for skiers, snowboarders and audience alike! Skiing on the Mont Blanc side of St Gervais is served by the Mont Blanc Tramway, a mountain railway that climbs slowly to the Col de Voza at 1,653m, where it links to the skiing above Les Houches.
St Gervais village has a small but excellent range of restaurants, from the good value 'L’Eterle' ( a lot more than just a simple pizzeria), through to the very fine 'Sérac. Le Galeta and Le Royal serve a variety of local specialities, while in St Nicholas, 'Le Coin du Feu', is well worth the detour. There are a good variety of bars, notably La Grange and the more fancy Pur Bar, with L'Oboose being very popular with the late-stop-out crowd because of it's atmosphere and live music. Every Thursday morning in St Gervais there is a superb genuine market.
St Gervais has three nursery-slope lifts and two kindergartens. The ESF at St Gervais and St Nicholas, and the ESI at Le Bettex, all offer standard lessons, as well as cross-country, slalom, telemark or guiding. The two local mountain-guiding companies are Compagnie des Guides de St Gervais and Guides des Cimes, and both can organise heli-skiing (in Italy or Switzerland,) as well as ski- touring, snow shoeing and winter mountaineering.
Numerous are the places of interest around St Gervais, among those you should not miss Chamonix, the world capital of mountaineering, very cosmopolitan and only a short drive away, it boasts first-rate leisure facilities and a huge range of shops and restaurants; L’Aiguille du Midi reacheable by cable car from Chamonix which offers literally brethtaking views from Europe’s highest cable car station (3842m) and from where you can walk back to the famous ‘Mer de Glace’ with ease and catch Montenvers train back to town; the hot springs of St Gervais with their benefits of health and beauty spa treatments of the only ‘Alti Forme’ resort in the Alps
Print 