We all know how learning to ski or snowboard goes – you spend your first wobbly day or two of your ski holidays within arm’s length of the cafes, on a nursery slope as steep as… well its almost completely flat. Then you progress a little further from your ski accommodation up the hill and find a slightly steeper bit called a green run.. and then a blue piste to go a bit quicker… and so on until you’re taking ski lifts high up the mountain to the top ski lifts where the best snow and most extreme gradients (and rates of decent) are to be found.
Not so when skiing Les 2 Alpes
Often called “the upside down ski resort”, Les Deux Alpes is so named because, unlike pretty much every other major ski resort in the world, 2 Alpes keeps its easiest and nursery slopes at the top of the mountain… and its fiendishly challenging stuff down at the bottom near town.
This has two VERY important consequences:
1. it is one of the best places to learn to ski and snowboard in the world
2. it is one of the scariest places for a beginner to miss the last lift back down in the world
Set your alarm for 15:30 and find a lift down!
With the biggest skied glacier in Europe you can get plenty of summer piste time in at Les 2 Alpes, but the highest area can be shut down in winter if blizzards make it unsafe. Les Deux Alpes is probably best known as the home of one of Europe’s if not the world’s top snow parks, which is moved up and rebuilt from its winter 2600m to 3200 for the summer season. Near the top, Les Deux Alpes is also linked to the legendary off piste of La Grave – only to be attempted with a mountain guide!
You wouldn’t believe it if you’d walked and driven around with us, but Les 2 Alpes is also the second oldest ski resort in France to holiday (after Chamonix ski holidays). A very dificult fact to take in, as you navigate this enormous and modern looking ski town.
Arriving for a quick day of work there in early October, we probably couldn’t have picked a quieter time to visit, but we were still amazed by how utterly deserted it felt.
Crossing from one empty street into a second, we were stopped by a huge shaven-headed biker with black paint brush in hand.
He turned out to be a a cracking chap from Paris, down to help his friend do up her bar, and a huge fan of vintage Americana – expressing his enthusiasm in much better English than my French, we couldn’t but stop and invite the whole family in for a closer inspection. (sorry for not taking a picture, we got carried away gassing about bikes & caravans in franglais)
As fickle as I know it sounds, this one encounter completely changed my opinion of the place and its now at the top of the “must go back to” list for this season. As I used to say when making telly, it’s always about the people.
Beautiful in summer, Les 2 Alpes is one of the best ski resorts in the winter too – awesome glacier skiing and some of the best value ski accommodation in the French alps. Superb!