© Cara Brown
© Cara Brown
© Cara Brown
Summer Ski Race Training & Other Activities in Les 2 Alpes
There's so much to do here in the summer..
Les Deux Alpes is one of the Alps most bustling summer resorts. It’s home to Europe’s largest glacier which hosts training pistes for national teams all around the world, it has hundreds of kilometres of walking and mountain biking trails and a huge range of summer activities including volleyball, tennis, a luge, a swimming pool, archery, golf, mini golf and an avalanche simulator!
I spent last week training up on the glacier with Orsatus Race Team. The weather was absolutely amazing, the snow was hard and remained in great condition for the majority of the morning before I headed back down the hill around midday. I was training next to the Italian and French ski teams and it was always a race at the bottom to see if I could get up the lift with Alexis Pinturault or my idol, Matteo Marsaglia!
There weren’t enough afternoons in the week to try out all the activities but volleyball was my favourite on the sand courts available for anyone to use. The lift pass comes with free entry to the tennis, mini golf, archery, swimming pool and a one week pass gets you six free shots on the luge! On one afternoon we also did the killer Venosc hike.
The little village of Venosc sits just down the back of the valley where Deux Alpes sits and is only accessible via a telecabine that leaves from Deux Alpes.
There is also a very scary looking downhill Mountain biking track that goes down to the village. The bubble is included in your lift pass or you can buy a round trip ticket for 5.70euros. The village is very sweet and I recommend a visit even if you don’t fancy the hike back up!
Les Deux Alpes' biggest summer activity has to be it’s mountain biking. You can take the lift all the way up to the glacier and enjoy over an hours worth of downhill riding on all terrain. At town level there is also a massive jumps park that has been built on the lower slopes and is free for anyone to use.
Every summer, it is host to the Red Bull Crankworx, the biggest VTT [MTB] event in the world! Last weekend the Mountain Of Hell event took place. This annual event had qualifying runs on Friday and Saturday and unfortunately on Sunday when the race was due to take place a storm came in and the lifts were closed; however, the race took the times from the qualifying runs to award the top spots on the podium to Jamie Nicoll, Sebastien Claquin and Marco Arnold.
If you want even more of a thrill out of your holiday in Deux Alpes the ultimate activity is the bungee jump “Voltige Bungee”. This jump is like no other as it plunges 140m and the starting point is half way along a cable car, the only one in France. You free fall for around 6 seconds at 180km/h before the elastic catches you at just 20m above the ground! I have yet to experience this jump and it will take more than a couple of elastics to convince me to jump out of a cable car but it is definitely the thing to do if you want a real adrenaline rush and seal the deal on a fantastic holiday.
