Alps Trip 2013 – Morzine v's Alpe D'Huez & Deux Alpes

I’m organising a trip for around a dozen people going to the Alps next year and we’ve narrowed it down to two options:

A) A week in Morzine
B) A week split between Alpe D’Huez & Deux Alpes.

There will be a mix of abilities but everyone will be an experienced mountain biker used to riding the worst (best) that the Peak District, Lake District, etc, has to throw at you but not everyone is a DH demon.

I’d be grateful for any posts that could give me a few pointers: where is the best option, where should we stay, when should we go, etc.

Cheers in advance,

Paul

I would say location probably not the biggest decision in that situations. My advice Take walky talkies or you will lose people, and do not attempt to force the group to stay together. Let it split up so likeminded people can go off and do their thing. Then in the evening get drunk and tell tales of your radness.

Morzine certainly offers a lot of variety accessible from one central point, I have no specific knowledge of Alpe D’Huez though.

Morzine has great variety of trails and plenty of other stuff to do (rafting, swimming, ice skating, etc) so it works well for a big group. You can get a chalet for 12 easily and cheaply and having a single base make the logistics much easier. We keep thinking about going elsewhere but Morzine just fits so well.

If you are into mountain biking rather than downhilling then you may prefer Les Arcs or Verbier. I’ve never been but I’ve heard its good.

I think The White Room, Trail Addiction and Mountain bike Verbier all come in highly rated.

I think Morzine is maybe the easier option. It’s a good base from which you can explore a large area and do quite a lot of things besides mountain biking.
The town is good and the trails are good though quite busy.

Alpe d’huez and les deux alpes are fantastic however. Both offer much more of a ‘big mountain’ feel to that of Morzine. The mega track is awesome and a real experience. Les deux too is amazing, like riding on the moon at the top. I guess it depends on the skill level of the majority of the group. D’huez has tons of good practice tracks though but I suppose places like les gets work well for that too plus xc works well in the pds.

Are you flying? Morzine is easy for that, the others probably not so much…

and for balance…

there’s no point at all going to alpe d’huez if you’re not racing the megavalanche.

there are loads of great places to take your bike, alpe d’huez would be waaay down the list.

les duex alpes doesn’t even have the attraction of the mega, it’s even further down the list.

Morzine is the easiest, as the trails & maps are easy to follow, transfer from Geneva is a doddle, accomodation is good/plentiful, town is nice etc. etc.

The bad points are that many of the trails are DH level and pretty rough, even for a 140mm FS rig. You can obviously avoid them and find more XC stuff but just be warned. Less skilled riders may struggle on some of them.

But for a first trip, and ease of organisation, then Morzine is my recommendation.

Its been 3 years since i was at Alp D’Huez, but i’d wholeheartedly agree with Ahwiles. Unless you’re a roadie, Alp d’Huez is woeful for general riding. There are only a handful of decent trails. However, the week of the MegAvalanche is excellent as there is a proper buzz in and around the town.

Morzine on the other hand has a lot more to offer. If you want proper big mountains then head over to Les Crossets or Champery. If you want loads of awesome trails then head to Les Gets. If you love braking bumps, then ride Chatel and the Pleny DH. All accessible from 2 Gondolas in Morzine.

A Lift pass for the whole porte du Soleil area is only £60 for a week – an absolute bargain for the amount of trails on offer.

Without being difficult I don’t think you should narrow it down to those two options at this stage.

I would start with budget, if you can afford a chalet style guided holiday you’ll get the most riding that way and access to places you will struggle to find / get to otherwise. I’ve done 4 Alps trips now, 3 self guided/organized and one with Trail Addiction, without a shadow of a doubt you’ll get much more riding with a guided trip (BTW I rode Verbier and Chamonix after TA holiday and did about 1/2 the amount of riding in a day as I’d done previous week, navigations/organisation just takes longer and of course no van uplift to remoter places). If you add in all the extras you get with a guided trip I think it makes a very compelling argument.

If it’s French/Swiss Alps you are interested in then following get consistent good feedback, Trail A, Bike Verbier, White Room.

As to your two choices, for a first time holiday you can tick the Morzine box (which most Brits seem to want to do)and with effort on locating routes, off here and/or hiring a guide for a day or two. You can happily fill a week with riding. Trying a 2 centre holiday with 12 people sounds like herding cats and will certainly cost more money. Date wise it makes most sense to go in July/Aug when all the Portes du Soleil linking lifts are open, spending a week in just Morzine/Les gets will drive you mad. Morzine is also 45 mins from Lake Geneva (some lovely medieval towns on the French side, boat trips on the lake to Swiss side etc) if people want a break from biking. If you want a focus you could enter the Pass Portes du Soleil on say the Sunday (always late June see event website) to use as the intro to the area then have a weeks riding afterwards.

The negatives for Morzine is it’s relatively busy and hence the marked trails are very worn. It’s also quite low level so nice that there are lots of trees but it doesn’t give you the high mountain big vertical experience (eg 500m descents not 2000m)

Deux alpes is ammazing and fsr bettrr than morzine, think of morzine as benidorm, where all the brits go for average! Deux alpes trails are much better, quieter, and longer, theres even a beah overlooking alp d hurz where they go toess! The run down to venosc is epic and lift assisted til 8pm too, goo timrs, awesome scenery, forget morzine, its tired

Excuse fat finger spelling on smart phone!

Just to whet your appetite.

Morzine is full of storm troopers in full face helmets, full body armour at DH bikes. It’s possible with a little effort to get away from them but …

A guided holiday takes you to places like this (Trail Addiction Destination X)

[/url] Col du Courvercle[/url] by JambalayaPhoto[/url], on Flickr[/img]

I would pick deux alpes/alpe d’huez. The weather is better, there is stacks of really good riding (mega blues with loads of jumps to pretty hard technical blacks) and its less busy than the portes du soleil. Personally I think deux alpes is the best bike park in the french alps. Alpes d’huez has loads of enduro type options and the area is pretty big, taking in Oz d’oisans and vaujany. The lift passes are also pretty good value, 15 Euros as opposed to 20+ at deux alpes and the PdS.

A good location to stay is Venosc. There are a number of campsites close to the cable car up to deux alpes and you can easily commute to alpes d’huez.

The week after the mondiale du VTT is a good time to go, the trails are quiet, still in reasonable condition, the top lifts up to the glacier are usually open and the weather is usually good.

peteroughton169 – Member

…The run down to venosc is epic…

if you like berms and braking bumps, and berms with braking bumps.

good views though.

There are many, many better resorts than Morzine & the PDS for riding.

The trump card it does hold however is the sheer number of lift assisted trails through the region.

To be honest, for an easy life & a big group – it’s probably the best choice though.

A good location to stay is Venosc. There are a number of campsites close to the cable car up to deux alpes and you can easily commute to alpes d’huez.

The run down to venosc is epic

^^^Them^^^

If you do decide on Morzine/PdS, I can highly recommend Lionell for some guiding/coaching and also Ski Blue Ridge in Les Gets as a place to stay and they do excellent airport transfers too. I used these in my 2011/2012 trips there (2011 PPdS and 2012 general riding),

Lionell at Synergie/MCF[/url]

Rob and Jane at Ski Blue Ridge[/url]

PPdS

Personally I’d go to Morzine. A huge variety of trails to choose from. There’s a limited number at both Huez and Deux Alpes.

Lionell is brilliant but we get first dibs. 😉

Just spent a few days in Courchevel and the 3-Valleys area. 5-day lift pass covering all of the 3 Valleys lifts costs 36 Euro. Quality accomodation in chalets is available at great price.
s. Try the Pierre et Vancanses website.

Several black / red runs with over 1000m of desecent. If you use the resort buses to return, even longer descents are possible. Courchevel and Meribel certainly offer the big mouintain experience and also relatively quite trails. Also good bike hire if you want a full-on downhill rig.

Had a couple of weeks in the Alps this summer. Started in Les Gets for a few days then decamped to Alp d’huez. Much prefered the riding in Adh and that’s without visiting DA. Steeper rockier stuff is what I tend to like. ADH feels less manufactured

Just back from a week in Les Arcs riding a 5″ bike after 3 years of road tripping around a different resort each day in an LDV and numerous years before that in Les Gets.

Les Arcs was great, really nice place to stay, quiet, great views, great lifts, loads of trails and easy to navigate and to find snide trails. We based ourselves in teh camp site at Bourg Sainte Maurice and had two days in La Thuile which was awesome and did a day guided by steve from the white rooms which took us from the top of the Col D’iseran back down to Bourg. The other days we stayed in Les Arcs and one day we went over to La Plagne way but gave up as the lifts mainly closed the week previous.

Morzine is good for a first experiance but otherwise pretty stale. The riding is mainly on blown out featureless tracks littered with braking bumps, and this makes injury far more likely for inexperianced riders as clinging on to the bars becomes the priority over actually riding your bike. The weather is really hit or miss here too and queueing for lifts soon becomes tiresome (as does the ego there)

Id look at Les arcs seriously as there is a massive amount of riding to be had in teh valleys around it and from the top lift you get circa 1700m of descent.

Steve from the white rooms really knows his stuff too so id look at staying there where you will be guaranteed hassle free riding on trails you wont essentially find impossible to find, but you will find it time consuming and difficult to get to with your own transport.

unless you are all experienced in alps trips too, herding 12 around will be hard going as someone has already said.

Personally i wouldnt go back to the PDS, but i have seen what else is on offer, maybe do the PDS first, realise its crap and then next time go somewhere with real riding.

Think of it as going on a trip to the Nurburgring but stopping at the go cart track on the side of the M20 instead. Never really going to be as good is it!

Should have said that we planned on going to ADH and 2A on the trip but decided against it as there was so much still to do on the doorstep that it seemed pointless (and i have rode at both a few times previously so had something to compare it to)

.

Thanks for the feedback everyone – I appreciate the comments.

All the people I know who’ve been to Morzine rave out about it: loads of trails to ride, plenty of places to stay, good for a few beers in the evening, can be done for reasonable money, etc.

The people who go to elsewhere say that Morzine is too busy and that Alpe D’Huez & Deux Alpes has more natural, longer descents, there’s less attitude and no queueing for lifts.

To be honest I think i’m going to be blown away by the trails at either resort as i’m an Alps virgin.

We will split into groups to ride as there is no point the best riders in the group feeling held back by the others and no point in less experienced riders trying to keep up on stuff that’s a little out of their league and then stacking it.

Ideally we’ll stay somewhere that is catered accommodation as if we’ve split up during the day it will be good to meet up for a meal in the evening, swap tales of daring do and then head out for a few beers.

The smallest bike is likely to be a Zesty, some are renting/taking DH rigs. Luckily we’ve got the option of a few lads coming out in a van with the bikes so others have the choice of flying or driving (whichever suits best).

Think this argument could run until we book in October……..

Alp D’heuz and deux alps are smaller than Morzine.

Morzine can be overcrowded and not maintained unless you get out there.

Best of both was Les Arcs – we did white room. So much riding it was untrue, so few people. Trails were better and in much better condition.

(Morzine 6 times, Mega twice, Les Arcs Twice)

Back to Les Arcs everythine

I’ll add my tuppence worth, as I personally think that AdH and 2A are probably two of the worst places to spend a week’s holiday in the alps. The reasons: AdH is mint when mega week is on, you ride the mega tracks and have a great time. At any other time the riding seems relatively limited. Deux Alpes used to boast 26 dh tracks.. dont know if that number is still the same, but either way they all seemed the same. Very little variety.

I’ve done two seasons in Morzine, countless holidays there, and two seasons in Les Arcs with visits to La Rosiere and La Thuile, and a week in the three valleys.

If you like braking bumps, a lot of traffic and full on downhill tracks, then go to Morzine. There are some fantastic days out to be had in the Portes du Soleil generally but unless you want to hire a guide, you’re not very likely to find the best of the singletrack over there.

If you like variety, proper singletrack suitable for 5-6″ bikes, no braking bumps and no traffic, go to Les Arcs. If you want to go to the alps to make the most of the lifts, then you can. You needn’t pedal up any hills but still descend thousands of feet through a week there. A bit of pedalling combined with the lifts is even more rewarding as there are some absolutely fantastic trails all over the Paradiski area and beyond. However, you definitely will need a guide to get the best out of it, and whilst I’ve said that about Morzine, having worked as a guide in both places I do genuinely think the quality of singletrack in LA is much higher and there’s more of it per square km.

If on the other hand you want quite smooth non-rocky, non-rooty trails, something some people may describe as featureless and bland, go to Deux Alpes.

I found some mint stuff in the 3 Valleys, but it requires exploration beyond the newly built trails they have there, and good map reading (and interpretation, French IGN maps take a little bit of getting used to to get the most out of the information on them). There’s a great dh track from the top of the Tougnete lift back into MEribel Mottaret, and also down the other side into St Martin de Belleville, as well as a trail from the top of the Pas du Lac lift, but that’s only 3 or 4 tracks. There are other marked tracks but they’re pretty poor to be honest.

As a total stranger to you with no idea of what riding you like, I’d recommend Les Arcs just for the variety. You’re bound to find something that floats everyone’s boat there.