Hi,

I’m thinking about driving to Les Arcs spring / summer 2017. Got a transporter van and plenty room for me and a couple of friends and all bikes / equipment.

There are some decent looking guided tour operators ( e.g. trail addiction) that I’m sure would give us a great experience but also wondering about the possibility of doing it without a guided tour (partly to save costs and partly just for the hell of it). Has anyone done similar? – what was your experience and would you recommend going without a guide. Is there anywhere to get a good reliable selection of trail gpx’s and how best to sort out lift passes in advance etc…

Me and my pals have ridden with switchbacks in Spain for a good few years and really enjoy the challenging trails out there. Current local favourites have to be the beast and screaming mile in the peak district.

Cheers in advance of any replies

Guided trip is worth every penny, proper bed, food, drinks, guides with local knowledge and van uplifts to get you places the ski lifts do not. As you said Trail Addiction and also White Room Chalet.

That being said many people go “self guided” typically staying down in Bourg S-M. A few threads inc this one

http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/les-arcs-single-track-the-hard-to-find-stuff-where-and-how

Lots of stuff on trailforks. Lifts open July & August – no need to buy in advance. We’ve mixed it up over the years doing a mixture of white room and self guided. Guided holiday worth every penny.

If you’re confident and have some guidance on where to look beforehand then you’ll get some good riding self guiding from the lifts. If you go guided you’ll get lots of good riding both from and away from the lifts, with routes taking in the type of riding you like and your skill levels.

Without guiding the areas you can access are far more limited and you can end up on stuff that is too hard/easy for you, on routes that don’t suit your riding preferences, missing the really good stuff or just don’t link so you end up wasting time riding link routes back up the valley.

That said this year I’m not going guided but I’ve done 4 years out there (and some of the others going have done far more) and have enough idea of where to go and we’re going as a group of families so we are not looking to cane it the whole time anyway so being restricted to certain areas is less of an issue.

I think it partly depends on how many days riding you want in Les Arcs. You have the option of Tignes/Val D’isere and then La Rosiere/La Thuile a short drive away. Put together, you wont ride the same area more than 2/3 times in a week, so could make do riding off GPX trails + signed trails.
However, its the hassle after and before riding that can make an all inclusive a bit more of a holiday.

Did Les Arc a few years ago on a DH bike, stayed in B-S-M and self guided ourselves. Have done a lot of snowboarding in Les Arc over the years so know the layout of the area if not the bike trails.
Got it wrong a few times and ended up in the valley bottom with big pushes/rides back to the funicular/lifts. Otherwise spent a great week blasting around a variety of trails.
If money wasn’t the deciding factor I would go with a guided/catered holiday.

Go for a week’s guided and be fed & watered in a nice chalet, then stay on for a few days of diying. Best of both.

Went there for a couple of days. There are some just fantastic trails in there, some of which we used Trailforks to find.
I think we’d have struggled to find much more after a couple of days so I reckon a guide would be worth it.

Guided is a holiday multiplier- no time wasted getting lost or tracking down food or riding crap trails, no missing out on good trails you don’t know about… When you consider the whole cost of travel, living, and holiday, it always seems worth it to me.

(Les Arcs itself is decent but… White Room are literally just up the road, and generally will ride there for one or two days on a week’s holiday. There’s better riding all over the place around there- La Thuile and Pila, Sainte Foy and so on.)

But driving down yourself you get the luxury of being able to stay on a little longer if you want and making use of your new guided experience to redo stuff or explore further.

We bought a weeks lift pass there 2 summers ago. Cash was tight to we had to do it ourselves. I have a PhD and therefore am a research GEEK and spent lots of time before finding route on Strava, mtb websites, reading blogs etc. I would suggest we never got bored. Think we rode 5 days of the week. First day the OH likely cracked his ribs on an off piste corner (riding off piste on our first ever day in the Alps was maybe a bit stupid!) so we did have one day walking. It can be done without a guide. That said it did take quite a bit of effort, and though I enjoy that sort of thing, could see how others would hate it. Going guided would mean you don’t really have to think, but don’t be put off it if cost means it’s your only way to go. We had a great 2.5 weeks self guided with riding, walking, via ferrata. The other thing is you don’t have to just ride Les Arcs. So many trails within 1.5 hours of there and if you have the transporter, easy to move about. Have a look at the vertebrate guides Alps book for some ideas.

for the 1st time to the area guiding is a no brainer, especially at that time of year, as lifts dont open until end of june. When we went mid june there was still a fair chunk of snow on some of the trails. if you are looking for accommodation and guiding white rooms or trail addiction are very good, we used whiterooms this year and they were spot on, and you get free beer at the chalet. If you just want guiding and uplift then try Enduro Camp, https://www.facebook.com/endurocamps/?fref=ts they are all English speaking, well pigeon, french guides that have lived in the area all there lives, we had a day with them on the chalet day off, which all chalet/guide places seem to do. and they were brilliant. expect a bit of typical french ski school riding instruction, “bend zee knees” and “turn, turn” but it all adds to the flavour.

Fully agree with @Northwind
I had an amazing week with them this year.

If you decide to go solo then as bigwill mentions there’s still the option of picking up a guide for a day or two- sometimes you can grab a guide from the holiday companies on rest day, and there’s indepenedents too. It looks like Yvan Bonin is working with Trailaddiction now otherwise he’d have been my first port of call, he guided me the first time I went with White Rooms and it was some of the best days’ riding I’ve ever done. He just wanted to ride as much as we did 😆

We did a long weekend in LA last year and had a ball. 3 full days riding, including the marked trails and some natural stuff. We stayed in a chalet in Vallandry, one of the small villages with its own lift, proper chalets, and restaurants/bars/shops. Try PeiseyVallandryRetals.com.

We went solo, with lots of trail recommendations from here. I would love a week guided, but can’t justify a whole week away from the family.

My Les Arcs thread

From last year – Jambalayas link in it was really good.

Spent a week there a couple of years ago. Incredible place. I pretty much just followed my nose for the whole time, spoke to lots of locals, paired up with some folk here ant there. I found that you can pretty much pick a trail, ride it until you hit a road, ride one way for 100 yards or so until you find another trail, repeat. There’s some incredibly technical stuff if you know where to look, likewise there’s endless flowy singletrack and everything between. I like doing my own thing, and I was just happy to explore the valleys, so it suited me fine. Shame La Vada isn’t game anymore #deamily gazes into middle distance# 🙄

La Varda was open last summer.

Oh really? I thought the authorities had banned mtb from using it?

Was closed to bikes and then re-opened after local pressure inc from Stevo at White Room

PS – Jambalaya, thanks for all your LA reccommendations last year! We loved it, and are going back en masse this July.