Les Arcs

Thinking of nipping over to Les Arcs from Morzine on sunday for a few days as the novelty of slogging through the mud is wearing off. Is it worth it? Will it be less muddy? And what are the trails like? We won’t be hiring a guide so will mainly be riding the more obvious trails. The forecast looks changeable next week.

Any advice on conditions and trails? Or maybe Tignes?

Tom KP

Got back from a week out there on Saturday, weather wasn’t great but the mud wasn’t to bad, certainly nothing like the pictures I’ve seen of morzine/les gets most of the good trails are well off the radar unless your after the bike park ones

Did a week guided and I can say I wouldn’t probably have found most of the trails, they are mainly old paths and mining tracks. That said the riding was great and might be worth persisting trying to find things.

HTH

Depends what you’re going for – there arn’t anywhere near as many outright DH tracks, but if you’re taking AM bikes it’s significantly better IMO.

That said, unless you have a guide, i’d imagine you will get hopelessly lost, unless you want to be reading a map every 5 minutes.

For the sake of the price of a guide, i’d be going for it – i’d want maximum time riding fun stuff, minimum messing around.

The trails will hold up substantially better, due to a fraction of the users.

Just got back from a week there,first time,no guide
There’s loads of trails that are dead easy to find and the the bike park is good value for a couple of days on its own
I found loads of dead friendly folks who were happy to share their knowledge
Mud was fine at worst but dried so fast it took a morning after a downpour before everything was rockin’ again
Just worth watching out for really steep stuff when it’s mega wet as the roots get slippy & there’s an awful lot of them!!

Tignes is riding well at the moment. Was blazing sunshine today.

La Thuile is 40 minutes from Les Arcs and will be drier and dustier. Pila is a bit further, but worth the trip. So that’s at least two days covered!

I wouldn’t bother with Les Arcs without a guide. The bike park stuff is very generic and not worth travelling far for IMO. On the other hand, some of the guided remote stuff is completely epic.

On the other hand it’s very convenient to cruise into Bourg and grab the funi up the hill to cut down on travelling time. There’s also a campsite right at the bottom of the funi.

I’d be going to Le Thuile, the trails rock are superb, more natural and the Pizza rocks! Les arcs is awesome but you won’t unlock it in that time without a guide, Le Thuile and Pila are are easy to navigate without a guide.
If I had three days I would deffo do Pila, Le Thuile & Les arcs.

My vote would be Pila if only for the 11km trail, but watch out as it likes to eat spokes!

Godzilla I’m missing chasing your fat ass down the Alps trails!!!!!!!

Yes, the 11km Freeride trail from Pila to Aosta is bloomin’ wicked fun.

Godzilla I’m missing chasing your fat ass down the Alps trails!!!!!!!

Cant wait until next year, ill get Jaffa to send you a postcard bro 😉

The 11km Freeride trail from Pila to Aosta is bloomin’ wicked fun

Yep, one of the ten trails to ride before your Orange five dies you die.

La Thuile is basically magnificent- imagine if innerleithen dh had an alp, 2 chairlifts, and dust instead of mud. Incredible stuff, I can’t wait to get back.

Les Arcs is good and has some non-cliche stuff… Yeah the cachette and some of the assorted reds etc are very generic (though still good fun and more varied than a lot of this sort of thing) but there’s foresty singletrack stuff (dreamtime?) which is lovely, black 8 is mostly class (except where it’s trashed at the bottom), etc. But agreed, the best stuff I’ve ridden there wasn’t officially bike stuff, double header and la varda and that. I’ve generally ridden there guided which helps but I could have a good time there just with easy-to-access public trails

(frankly I could spend a happy day bombing cachette and black 8. But then equally I can do 14 fort william runs in a day and still find it fun so perhaps I am wrong in the head)

It’s less about finding the best hidden gems and more about riding somewhere that isn’t a mud fest. If we like it we can always come back next year unless Whistler beckons). Looks like it’s Tignes/les Arcs/Thuile next week then.

Are you on all mountain bikes or DH bikes? Either way if you have software to view gpx files I could send you what I have in the Les Arcs/La Plagne area. The trails are best suited to All mountain bikes but we showed some lads we met there last week a few secret trails and they were on DH bikes.

guys , how do u to get to la varda and any other single track trails there ?

You’ll need an IGN map…

You need to be careful too, I seem to remember that near the start of the trail is on National Park land and you’re not meant to ride it?

Anyway, it’s at the top of the Transarc lift, and over towards the Aiguille Grive. It’s a bit of a climb. But it’s not too bad.

We were at Morzine 3 weeks ago and riding through mud has a limited attraction. Good fun for 2 days or so. We headed south through the Mont Blanc tunnel to dry out.

La Thuile is great, fast and flowy singletrack well suited to trail bikes, but I hired a DH bike at Pila as it made the 11km runs down to Aosta a little more fun and easier to hit hard. Good for the bike park too. But that maybe because I’m not that good : )

Hob Nob – Member

You need to be careful too, I seem to remember that near the start of the trail is on National Park land and you’re not meant to ride it?

IIRC the trail is basically the border of the national park so legit to ride- though there are “no bikes” signs.

Last week, most of the La Thuile EWS stages were still taped and labelled, so you could go all “Enduro” if you fancy! 😉

La Varda – you need to get the Varet bubble after the Transarc to get you closer to the ridge.

I agree with zedz about Pila – I was definitely underbiked up on the park trails and we all said it would have been great on a DH bike but the trail down to Aosta was a little more natural and more suited to what I was riding. Amazing fun!

Northwind

IIRC the trail is basically the border of the national park so legit to ride- though there are “no bikes” signs.

Indeed. If you go OTB on the upper bit, make sure you fall to the right side of the trail, otherwise, technically, it’s a 300 Euro fine 😉

If you go OTB on the middle bit, you probably don’t need to worry about the fine (because you will have fallen to your death on the rocks below………)

Will head in that direction then. Have no way of using GPX files, but thanks for the offer.

Tom KP

so les arc or thuile , which has better flawy single track ?

I’d say for pure flow you want to head to La Thuile. The Les Arcs stuff is either slightly crap wide DH with rubbish berms or tight technical rocky steep stuff. La Thuile is still generally fairly steep in places and has some pretty rough/off camber stuff hidden in the woods, but it also has some smoother faster flow trails. This year, the built berms down from the top lift are also pretty well done, and you can carry mega speed around them 😉

If you’re only riding marked trails, La Thuile wins hands down.

St foye for the outside bet a day some outstanding trails.

trail addiction run out of les arcs and do some epic back country riding trips, i spent a week out there with them and the off piste is off the map,

@Zerocool, why don’t you try riding in Samoens, easy car ride from Morzine and/or do the excellent descent from above Les Gets/Lac Joux Plane (you need a car/taxi to get home but you could leave one car in Samoens and ride back to itbthe following day). email me for a map, the Samoens lift serves some nice trails. I think the mud in Morzine is worse as there are so many riders.
By the way I think you can find plenty of for 2 days with an IGN map in Les Arcs, almost all the guided routes use the established footpaths with a few genuine off piste bits.

@Zerocool or anyone else. Fire me an email and I’ll send you a link to the off piste map I have for Les Arcs/La Plagne. I don’t want to post the link openly due to the map it’s based on being copyrighted.

Tracks are graded based on how much riders of a certain standard should enjoy them overall rather than how hard the hardest part of the trail is.

Oh… Just a thought, I think Yvan Bonin is still doing guiding around the area, his gallic Yoda guiding style might divide opinion but I think he’s the greatest man who’s ever lived. Usual rules apply for mtb guides, it’s basically a time multiplier, you avoid the timewastes and the bad trails and the getting lost and generally you cover more ground too.

mikewsmith – Member

St foye for the outside bet a day some outstanding trails.

For all there’s brilliant riding, could i navigate any of it? Or even figure out where to get the uplift van or where it’s going to drop me off? Not convinced 😆

There you go, la varda, enjoy!

Basically just buy an ign and highlighter and as soon as you see anyone who looks in the know hand it to them