A tip for anyone looking for amazing riding in the French Alps… We’ve just come back from a week staying in Chalet Sureaux in Meribel, run by Summer Basics (http://www.skibasics.co.uk/summer_basics.htm) and anyone who likes their cross-country biking steep, fast, technical and totally awesome should get out there now!

The chalet, which sleeps 10, is exceptional value and in a great location for the trails and the lifts. For those travelling in a smaller group, rooms can be booked individually. We found out about it following a ski trip with the company in January and suspected it would be well worth returning to the area with mountain bikes!

The riding can be as challenging as you like, with fast fire road descents or gnarly singletrack. Highlights of our stay included the day we descended some 4000m and the day a friendly French local guided us down a fantastic descent from the very top to the very bottom of the neighbouring Courchevel valley. There are very few people around and hundreds of kilometres of trails to explore and race down before jumping on a free shuttle bus back up to the top of the valley or using the lifts (45 euros for a week’s pass). We can’t wait to go back!

Are you on commission 🙄

I’m going out to the 3 valley’s area in 1 weeks time and I love that area, the best ride in that area is riding the Meribel ridge, a little painful getting up there but the amazing views and technical descent back into Meribel more than make up for that.
Did you fit that one in Caroallen ? 🙂

The ridge on the St Martin side is amazing. If you drop down the man made singletrack to just before St Martin 1 lift station from the Meribel side the pedal up from there is less brutal than the pedal/push up over past the olympic gondola.

The ride down from the Croix Jean Claude, past the Col de La Lune and down following signs to Villarlurin is epic. Really technical singletrack, rooty, steep, smile inducing stuff.

Nice ad.

Missed a trick on the commission front! Just wanted to post about a fab holiday in a really quiet area… Sounds like we’ll need to go back to track down the routes Gravy and meribelmtb suggest – they sound awesome!

Liftman – Member

Are you on commission

his forum history would point to that…..

1 post.

+1 for Meribel riding, stayed with alpine ethos(see above meribelmtb) in les allues,only stayed 4 nights and not nearly enough will be back next year

Hi Caroallen. Sounds like a rather good trip then? Did you drive or fly, and did you use your own bikes (if so, what are they) or hire some? Also how long did it take to travel there?

Hi Dingabell. We drove down from Calais mixing toll and non-toll roads and it was c10 hours. Nearest airport is Geneva. We took our own bikes (Cannondale Prophet and Orange Alpine 160) but saw bike hire places out there. Hope that helps!

Cheers for that. Have stuck it in my favourites just in case I get a pass for a long weekend away next summer.