I agree, it's a beautiful place, and 650km of runs (the largest skiing area in the world, apparently) can't be bad! I have very fond memories of that area - my first year of skiing was in Val Thorens, when we had beautiful weather all week. After that week, I was hooked.

However, I don't think Les Menuires is that great for beginners (one of whom we had with us this year), since the only blue runs seem to be the, as you put it, "kamikaze" bowl and the Vallons run at the other side of the resort. It struck me as being even worse than Val D'Isere, which when I was there seemed to have only had one blue back into the resort, and that was closed! Since it was only my second year of skiing, I generaly took a lift back down, oddly enough.

Still, we managed some stupid distances this year - all the way to the far end of Courcheval and back by early afternoon, despite the weather. I may even forgive Ian for his map-reading balls-up, when we found that after an hour of hard skiing from our morning break we had ended up back at the same restaurant, instead of being in a totally different valley for lunch!