A bit if advice please.
A group of us are going to les arcs this summer we are planning on staying down in Bourg as it has a bit more there for the evenings and its always downhill back to the chalet.

Weplan to go to Self Catering as there are 8 + of us and its worked well in the past when we have done the PDS 3 or 4 times.
So how easy is it to find the trails?
Or can you hire a guide for a couple of days and if so any recommendations?
any other helpful tips?

Tough to find the good trails. The best ones are not les arcs at all. Habeas a look at the white room. Vids of my last trip linked in my profile

Argh, where do I start!?

We camped at http://www.leversoyen.com/#!/accueil for two weeks – right across the road from the supermarket for your daily baguettes, and a five minute ride from the bottom of the funicular.

I don’t know about chalets in Bourg – all I know is I like being right next to the super U cos it gets you to the trails quicker in the morning!

We didn’t have a guide, we used a mixture of maps and knowledge of someone who’d ridden the area before. Hiring guides for the day is expensive unless there is a big group of you. That said, Trail Addiction, White Room, Bike Village all very highly rated.

Nearby is Tignes and La Rosiere. This year we will probably try Pila, Sainte Foy and La Thuile also. They are nearby.

We loved it and will be back again in July.

+1 the good trails are only available with a guide really

Pretty sure lots of the guiding companies will be prepared to help you out but it might be easier to just stay with them anyway.

ive done backcountry weeks with trailaddiction twice and can throughly recommend it 🙂

oh and btw going to any summer alps resort appart from Morzine and expecting stuff going on the evenings is a bit much! there is not much going on unless you have a chalet host/ guide to take you to the best stuff…… fondly remembers being driven up a mountain road to some kind of locals bonfire by James the trail addiction chalet host…

Very easy to find some trails; very hard to find many of them, I’d say

Not sure who does day-guiding. Trailaddiction, Whiteroom, Bike Village, … ask a few

It all depends on how well you plan and how much research you do.

We camped and found some ace trails but prob missed some other great ones too. This was a mix of researching the best stuff and then making an effort to find where it was in advance, meeting folk in a camp site and handing them the highlighter pen and the map, asking folk out riding, including guides of other groups. One in particular was more than happy to show us ace trails as he looked bored owing that his group were rubbish so he trailed us down a decent descent he showed us.

We also used Stevo at the White rooms for a route from the top of the Col D’Iseran back to Bourg which i had read about and wanted to do.

La Thuile is worth a look too, K2 trail is ace. Its like a trail centre but all DH tracks for freeride bikes as oppose to DH bikes (one word of warning here is to not bother trying to find the trails that involve climbing – top right as you look at the map) as they are best accessed from the pass du petit St Bernard and not by doing a massive fire road climb only to descend a fire road, or off piste as we chose)

Check lifts are open when you go to la rosiere as they were not all open when we went and it was a pain/very limited.

The VaD’isere DH track is nuts if you can find it. The Freeride stuff here is pants.

Tignes is free for a reason! No more to say.

You will have fun, just start doing your research and be prepared to put some time in looking for tracks that you want to ride.

For example some of the hidden stuff on the other side of the hydro pipe is unrideable unless you have massive balls and a DH bike, and some of the stuff to get to it is nearly vertical so not everything may suit you in any case

Les Arcs has lots of nice marked trails – one of my favourites is the black run under the Funicular back to Bourg. The Funic runs every 30 mins and takes about 10 mins to get to the top so you can try and race it down. It’s doable if you don’t stop and is massive fun.

We booked a day’s guided tour with coolbus.co.uk and the guide, Bri, was fresh from the Mega a few weeks before. We were driven up to Col du petit St Bernard and then spent the day dropping down into La Thuile. We did some mind blowning off piste stuff and then finished off with an epic ride down into Bourg. We did the best part of 75k I think (my phone died after 60k) but it was the best day’s biking I’ve ever experienced. He was just that much quicker than us that he pushed me right to my limits. Can’t remember exact costs but there was 6 of us and from memory it was circa €70 each for the minibus and guide – an absoloute bargain!

If you can get pointed to the start you can find your way down them easy enough, not many junctions to worry about. The ‘Enduro’ tracks in the trees take some runs to get your head around putting them together.

Great stuff down towards Nancroix / Peisey side but you need to make sure the lift is running to get back up, that lift shuts Saturdays (!).

Guide also took us over to La Plagne side, great trails there and also queiter but harder to find on your own me thinks.

Edited!

Are the trails not on Strava!

@titusrider few of us are doing the backcountry this summer, can’t wait, any tips?

Loads of brilliant trails. Some easy to find, many not!

My take is that you really need a guide to get the best out of the time – I’ve had several great holidays with Trail Addiction but The Mountain Bike Chalet, Bike Village & the White Room all get good reports too (Have ridden with Mansell from MBC quite a bit when he worked for TA)

Don’t forget, some of the companies can’t offer guiding currently as they don’t have the appropriate (french!) quals. MBC is certainly affected, don’t know about the others.

Don’t forget, some of the companies can’t offer guiding currently as they don’t have the appropriate (french!) quals. MBC is certainly affected, don’t know about the others.

We (The White Room) are unaffected as we’re all French-registered (but British qualified – it’s not true that you need to do a French qualification). Business as usual.

We had the exact same scenario last year – going to Les Arcs for a week in July, self-catered, and thinking do we book a guide or not?

Out of 7 days riding, we ended up booking a guide for 2. 1 of those days was riding in the Les Arcs area and the other day involved a bus drive over to the South West (about 30-45mins away – finished in Brides Les Bains), for a DH epic! I certainly felt we didn’t miss out, but also the days guided ride at Les Arcs did show us some other stuff we went back to.

If you search around you can find directions/map files of some of the best routes (my favourite was La Varda, which was actually easy to find).

Despite what some say, the marked trails are actually very good, and you’ll find more stuff along the way. And also well worth exploring La Plagne as well.

Thanks for the clarification stevo. Guess it’s same difference though, some companies can’t offer guiding at the moment?

Hi woody2000 – yeah, seems to be the case. I don’t really want to comment on anyone else.

hughjayteens
We used Brian from coolbus last year too. Man, that boy can ride a bike!! Had 2 days guiding for around 70/80 euros per day, between 10 guys it was very cheap.
Great riding around Les Arcs
Lifts opem 6th July this year

I dunno, we never had problems finding “hidden” trails. Just point your bike down any footpath and it’ll probably be good! There are quite a few waymarked trails, which are all good and will keep you occupied for a number of days. If you have a car, then Tignes/ValDI, La Thuile, La Rosiere, St Foy, Pila, are all worth a visit and not too far (Pila 1.5hrs – but most def worth it!)
With so many options and resorts available, we found there was no need for a guide. Sure they’ll most likely take you on some great trails, but we just went to different resorts. I wouldnt get a guide on a uk MTB hol…Just my opinion, dont shout at me!

Superfli +1

We were there for two weeks and did not get bored without a guide. The paths below the treeline are amazing to ride.

wallop – I see you stayed at LeVersoyen. The manager and his son are good friends of mine 🙂 Hope you enjoyed your stay there, its very well located. Although some of our group got a much better deal staying at a rental chalet down by Arcs Aventures.

When we were at White Room, I think Stevo took another group out for a day’s guiding on the rest day? But hey, there he is, ask him 😉 Their knowledge of the area is ridiculous and would let you get the most from your riding time.

I wasn’t paying an awful lot of attention to signposting etc so not sure what was on maps and what wasn’t. TBH Les Arcs was the least good of the locations we visited guided- which sounds a bit harsh, it was still ace, just less ace than the other days. I’m sure it has more to offer though.

La Thuile is fantastic, and just over the border. It seemed well waymarked but I think we were also using combos of trails and maybe some offmap stuff- think riding at innerleithen, one second you’re on gold run, next an old race line, then cresta, etc. I couldn’t get enough of it.

We nipped up to Tignes on the day off, it’s nothing like the quality of the other resorts, but there’s a lot of trails and a free uplift so we still had a good time. It was nice to unwind and mess around on the blues and greens tbh.

I have no idea how you’d go about finding and accessing my favourite trails of the week without having a Stevo though. Some were waymarked, many not, and joining them all up without wasting time and altitude would not be easy.

Nashwaymule, there’s a pdf trail Map link in Resources/Routes section of this site. The local companies/guides know way much more than this and can tailor the trails to your group but this map will keep you busy for a week or two.

Was going to organise a week long trip with some mates but due to all this ‘guiding’ malarkey now only stopping for a couple of days with the Mrs on a 3 week tour to Mont Ventoux, Carcassonne, Ainsa in the Pyrenees, then the Atlantic beaches. Mates are going elsewhere.