My husbands 40th birthday is in February and he has always wanted to go on a ski trip that would allow him to ski several countries in a day. Does anyone know of a place where there are groomed trails that will fit the bill? I am looking at Courmayeur (Italy) to Chamonix (France)but would love any suggestions and experiences that you can share.

The Serre Chevalier ski domaine in the Haute Alpes is lift-linked to the Milky Way in Italy. "Serre Che", as they call it, is one of the skiing world's best kept secrets. We had a family vacation ( my 'kids", son-in-law, my husband and I) there in 2000. Huge ski area; consists of 13 villages along a valley. Briancon, the main town, is only 12 miles from Italy. Highly recommend the area.

www. serrechevalier.com
www.brianon.com

With one possible exception, I don't think it's possible to ski in more than two countries in a day - and even then, if you want to stay on pistes as you seem to, it can be an unpleasant experience, with most of the day wasted in buses or taxis.

Remember in February ski lifts close round about 4. Your timing has to be immaculate if you want to avoid being benighted in a very, very expensive resort.

Take the example you quote. You can ski from the Courmayeur area to Chamonix ONLY off piste: it's a run that requires some skill and experience, and even then it's a considerable slog on the bus from Courmayeur to the lift some miles away and then up to the top. Several miles' demanding skiing along the Mer de Glace to Chamonix: you then need to organise a bus or taxi back to Courmayeur - with the inevitable long waits for convoys to be formed through the tunnel (delays run into the hours at the wrong time). The beginning of the run is very, very daunting indeed.

The on-piste alternative means skiing in Courmayeur, bus or taxi (again waiting for convoys to be formed) through the tunnel, lift up to the top, skiing in Chamonix then the whole thing over again backwards. You'll probably get two decent runs all day - though in fairness, this is THE single worst place for on-piste two-country skiing.

If you're not up to the challenges of the Mer de Glace, you need one of the places where there are properly interconnected cross-border lift systems. The major examples are:

- Portes du Soleil, which links France's indescribably charmless Avoriaz with a few Swiss resorts. However, it's an enormous <i> domaine skiable </i> and as long as you're in the queue the moment the lifts open, you can probably get a fair bit of exposure to both French and Swiss villages. Remember, though, that you're only really aware of which country you're in at the bottom, and time spent going up and down is a terrible waste when the lift system in these mega-complexes lets you do loads of skiing at the top with scarcely a moment lost in lift queues once you're up there.

- Cervinia (Italy)/Zermatt. This is well-known, but isn't a proper interconnected lift system like Portes du Soleil. You go to the top of the Matterhorn, ski to the bottom on the other side then come back and do it the other way round. It's very tight indeed to do this, and bad weather (very common) can strand you in the wrong country

- La Thuile (Italy)/ La Rosiere (France) Really another up and down connection: more boring, but more reliable than the Matterhorn

- there are some around the Italian area that laughingly calls itself the Turin Olympics site (ie, on a good day you can get to it from Turin in the same day). Some of the resorts are linked to Mongenevre in France.

It's claimed that you can do three countries (Austria, Italy and Slovenia) from Dreilaendereck in Austria. Its website that makes this claim functions really only in German (www.3laendereck.at), but I think it's just puffery: the peak is the border between the three, but there's only a piste down to Austria. You can't ski on piste in Italy or Slovenia, and even if you can ski off piste, it's not clear from the site that you can actually get back to the Austrian base.

There's a site discussing this at
http://snowheads.com/ski-forum/viewt...oberwiesenthal

Whoops, can't find www.briancon.com
Sorry.

I forgot to mention that Serre Chevalier is a traditional Alpine &quot;resort&quot; with lots of charm as opposed to the purpose-built concrete monoliths that are characteristic of many ski areas in France.

Another two country option is Ischgl, Austria, which interconnects with Switzerland (Samnaun). On a typical day you'll be crossing the border several times and may not even be aware of it.

A small correction to the info posted on Cervinia/Zermatt. You don't have to ski from the top of the Matterhorn (which would be some challenging run!), but just over the ridge that connects the Matterhorn and Kleine Matterhorn, which is the border between Italy and Switzerland. It's very simple to do and you don't need to actually ski all the way down into Zermatt from there. It is important to be aware of the weather, however, in case the lifts need to be closed early due to high winds. We skied from the Cervinia side a number of years ago, but spent a couple of days skiing almost exclusively on the Zermatt side - no problems whatsoever.

Both Ischgl/Samnaun and Cervinia/Zermatt are easily negotiated by moderately competent intermediates.

Dependant on snow you could follow the Trans Jura ski de fond trail that pops back and forwards across the French Swiss border