Rhone-Alpes, France

Capital City: Lyon
Closest Airport: Grenoble - Lyon - Chambery - Geneva
Population: 5,645,407
Resort Area: Annemasse -Annecy - Aix-Les-Bains - Albertville - Modane - Briancon - Grenoble
Snow Season: Beginning December - mid April
Main Language: French
Currency: Euro

The Rhone-Alpes are home to France's slickest resorts and monster peaks, and include the Isere, Savoie and Haute-Savoie regions. You'd be hard pushed to find a better range of terrain anywhere in Europe.

Household names like Chamonix, Courcheval, Val d'Isere, Tignes and Les Arcs are all dotted around here. Better still, so many of them are linked that your lift pass will seem a bit like Willy Wonka's golden ticket - giving you access to far more terrain than you could possibly hope to cover in a month, let alone seven days.

With several different international airports serving the region, access is easy and transfer times are never usually more than a couple of hours (in theory at least).