Hi……I am looking for some information regarding the Les Arcs area. Which is the best place to stay for access to the lifts,bars and restaurants. we don’t really want to be driving whilst there.

Cheers.
James.

Lots of places to sta. If you want to feel a bit remote in a little mountain town you can stay in Peisey Nancroix & get the lobster pot lift every day.

If we ever went back, and didn’t go guided, I would probably stay in Bourg & get the funicular railway up each day as it’s a proper town.

Bourg St Maurice.

Funicular railway takes you up the mountain and you can ride out and get further lifts from there.

It’s the sort of area that a guide is really helpful, as the best tracks are the old footpaths rather than purpose-made bike routes.

chakaping – Member

It’s the sort of area that a guide is really helpful, as the best tracks are the old footpaths rather than purpose-made bike routes.

Many of the trails have hidden entrances as well making them very hard to find (even if you rode them the previous day) and many others aren’t on any maps. A good guide is worth their weight in gold out there.

Legend – usually a guide hater

We stayed in Seez about a mile outside Bourg very quiet plus it’s on the road to Tignes. If u want something a bit off the beaten track if u drive out of Bourg on the main road to Tignes about half a mile just before u come to Seez there is a campsite called Le Recluse. Opposite this is a small gravel car park, here there are two trails that go straight up one is single track the other more fire road they head towards Col De Petit St Bernard. I had great fun going up and down these & there’s nobody about.

Book a guided holiday – if you add up all the benefits they are a bargain. Also they are great socially if you are a sole traveller, the mountains are much quieter in the summer so bars/restaurants are much quieter than during the ski season.

Trail Addiction are best known / longest established company in Les Arcs (I have done a holiday with them in Areches-Beaufort, it was excellent)

FWIW, Les Arcs is a great hub- Pila and La Thuile are just over the border and within sensible driving distance, and IMO are far better than any of the official trails at Les Arcs. Tignes has some good riding, Val d’Isere I’ve not been to but is also doable in a day. And Saint Foye but personally I’d not try and ride there unguided, I’d get lost and I’d definitely miss the uplift.

I’ve spent a couple of days just doing unguided map trails at Les Arcs and it was really good, but I don’t think any of the best stuff is on the maps, and some would be pretty hard to find.

and IMO are far better than any of the official trails at Les Arcs

Not hard – for the most part the marked trails are pretty pants.

FWIW – next year I intend to head out with the White Room instead of Trail Addiction. I’ve done 2 TA trips and they’ve both been amazing (even the first one which was non-stop rain for the week) but fancy something slightly different

Throughly recommend Trail addiction for a week.

It rained all week when I was there, except for the day the guides had a day off.

Camp site Le Versoyen is great and 2 mins ride from the fenicular and opposite the supermarket.

Trail addiction will show you around the Les Arcs hill, however White Rooms will show you the stuff further up the valley and get you out and about more. My choice would be WR.

The man made trails are pretty naff ill be honest. If you want to ride the best stuff you either need a guide or be prepared to spend a lot of time with an IGN map, google earth and youtube/vimeo. They are all on the IGN pretty much but you need to be able to read a map well and be prepared to hunt around, they arent obvious a lot of the time but once you get your eye in your laughing.

Ill help you get started, heres La Varda!

Have a look at The White Room, you wont be dissapointed

I’m not recommending the White Room as I haven’t booked yet and I don’t want it to be sold out !

Trail addiction will show you around the Les Arcs hill, however White Rooms will show you the stuff further up the valley and get you out and about more. My choice would be WR.

Actually, that’s a double edged sword. TA will cover a LOT of trails around Les Arcs AND La Plagne. WR will visit different areas but you don’t get to sample as many of the different trails in each one as you’re only there for a day or two.

TBH though, you wont lose with either.

Second trip to The White Room already booked for July 8)

so @andy you’re one of the g1ts who took the weeks we wanted then 😉

Sorry mate. Got to be quick 🙂

I’ve done 3 years on the trot at white room, think I’ll need to go somewhere else next year if I get away at all, just for a change but they are absolutely superb. Thing is, when you cost up a holiday in the alps, guiding ends up being a fairly small amount of the overall spend but it can add a hell of a lot of value. (much more so if you have an emergency)

I don’t know if the Enigma himself, Yvan Bonin, is still doing independent guiding but if he is, and you don’t want to do the full guide package thing, look him up. I spent some of my best days riding ever chasing his wheel around Les Arcs and La Thuile when he was with White Room. We go? We go.

(the other local guides I’ve seen around Les Arcs have all struck me as basically appalling)

We stayed in Peisey last year on our week with Trail Addiction. There’s some great riding around there but there’s a lot of stuff you’ll struggle to find without a guide or some local knowledge.

I have some gps plots of some rides we did out there if that’s of any help. We were there when the lifts were closed though so some of the rides might require getting a bit further out from the lift network.

Just looking at the map of La Varda is enough to bring me out in a cold sweat……

The Calm:

before The Storm:

😉

Love La Varda.

WR are rubbish so don’t book there…. please.

The whole area is great but no guide would mean lost opportunities, some fanastic slow super tech that just isn’t findable without local help.

Off to chase up the lads re next years hols.

We wanted to book WR pretty much as soon as we got back this year and our same week next year was sold out! We are now heading out there a bit later and will spend a second week in Bourg on our own (which is what we’ve done for the last three years – White Room was a first for us this year, and even though we’ve ridden a few weeks around LA, WR was frikking awesome).

Chapaking – Bourg St Maurice.

Funicular railway takes you up the mountain and you can ride out and get further lifts from there.

It’s the sort of area that a guide is really helpful, as the best tracks are the old footpaths rather than purpose-made bike routes.

I’ve been 6 times now and did a bit of guiding out there. First times I went with guides but TBH it is easy to manage without.

The guides I had well I felt sorry for them, they were both on their first week coincidentally (1 year apart) and the Company they worked for hadn’t really been honest with them about what to expect. I’ll never forget the look on the first chaps face as we all got armoured up and he produced his cantilever braked rigid bike.

It’s a pretty easy place to navigate around and there are plenty of maps to download online. Once you have got over getting your lift pass it is all plain sailing. There also lots of other routes (aside from the red/black) if you don’t mind exploring.

As for where to stay I’d second Borg St Maurice, good nightlife and it’s easy to get to the rest of the resort on the funicular and the rest of the lifts but I don’t think it really matters as everywhere is pretty accessible. I do like staying higher up for the views though.

If you decide to go DIY be sure that the accommodation you are booking is bike friendly and has secure storage. First DIY trip I did the accommodation confirmed that they “did have somewhere” for us to leave our bikes, turns out it was a metal loop screwed into fence and a cheap lock. Flat refused to let us take the bikes inside clean or not! In the end we settled on disassembling our bikes and packing them into our flight cases, every, sodding, day before we were allowed to take them to our room.

There are some good companies offering guiding etc but make sure you go with a reputable business, look out for photoshopped pics on their website, just from bitter experience 😀