LES ARCS AND THE SMALL SCREEN: 10 Videos

Here, in no particular order, are ten videos all about Les Arcs and its environs.

1.  The Beginning of the End for Miguel Indurain

Tour de France, 1996.  "Big Mig" has a jour sans on the road to Les Arcs.  Chris Boardman finds it a tad tricky too.  More here..

2.  Top Gear aux Arcs

Watch Hammond et al descend from Arc 1950 to Villaroger.  By car.  Racing against the locals.  On skis.

3.  Skiing Today

Courtesy of my daughter.

4.  Ski Joering:

Les Arcs seems to be one of the few places to practice this, er, unique activity.

5.  Tour de France 2009

Sadly, they stopped in Bourg St Maurice rather than making the climb up to Les Arcs.  And the winner of the stage was later tested positive.  More here.

6.  The 7e BCA

The Chasseurs Alpins have now left Bourg St Maurice - a big event, and one which will take some adapting to on a whole range of levels.

7.  Mountain Biking on the Cachette

The red run above 1600 morphs into a notable VTT descente in summmer:

8.  Panorama

This starts rather higher up, and gives a wonderful overview of Les Arcs' terrain during the summer.

9.  Welcome to Paradise

It's hard to love the official Paradiski branding but hey ho:

                          

10.  The "LA Session"

I think the days of these February meetings have now gone, but they were quite something...

APRES SKI: Summer in Les Arcs

Update 27 May 2013

Les Arcs is open this summer from 6 July to 30 August, with "pre-ouverture" on a couple of weekends in late June.  Cyclocoeur runs from 9-11 August.

There are one or two parts of the Alps - the Chamonix Valley and the Jungfrau region which do at least as well in summer as they do in winter.

This isn't the case in the Tarentaise.  But the resorts are open, the sun is (usually) out, and you are much further from the madding crowd than you are in winter.

Here's a "Top 10" Guide of things to do in Les Arcs.  If it rains, go to Le Lagon in Tignes for a swim.

The Les Arcs website is now in "summer mode", with the resort (including key lifts like the Transarc) open from 7th July.

Although there are lots of things to do, it's arguably the cycling that's the jewel in the crown.

Tour de France 2009, lower slopes of Cormet de Roselend

For cycling uphill, there is an almost endless range of options from Bourg St Maurice: Le Cormet de Roselend, Petit St Bernard, Cold de l'Iseran, plus of course the mythical climb to Les Arcs :)

The best English-language guide to cycling I've found is www.grenoblecycling.com, which covers just about every col you can think of.

In Bourg St Maurice, the big local event is Cyclocoeur, which runs from 10th-12th August, in aid of local disabled charities.  It involves various events for road and VTT, including the hard-core climb to Arc 2000, which takes the experts around an hour.  More on the event below:

For cycling downhill, there are endless VTT trails, including the Cachette piste at 1600 which is used for competitions.  The video below gives a good guide to the terrain. NB The initial descent, from Aiguille Grive down to the Nancroix valley can also be covered more sedately on foot, ending at the Hotel de La Vanoise in Peisey.  A chacun son gout....