10 YEARS OF PARADISKI

Paradiski is 10 years old this season:

To celebrate, Jean-Charles de Castelbajac has given the Vanoise Express a makeover.

There will be tightrope walking on 16th December, again at the Vanoise Express.  A "world premiere" is promised, with a 60m walk between the two cars:



It's also the 10th anniversary of Arc 1950, whose arrival marked a complete departure from the original Les Arcs' approach.  (See interview with Claudie Blanc for some history).  I personally find it hard to love the place, but it certainly means that Les Arcs and Peisey-Vallandry can offer a pretty full range of accommodation options, for all budgets and tastes.  And it certainly has helped fund the transformation of Les Arcs' lift system.

Here's the official Les Arcs press release on Paradiski's 10 years.

NEW SKI SEASON: More new things in Les Arcs

In addition to what's here, a few more things to look out for this season, courtesy of the excellent www.peisey-info.com.

The Les Arcs Film Festival isn't exactly new, but deserves a plug as the anchor event of the first week of the season, from 14 December, with "Yugoslav" films under the spotlight.  Much to the delight of the manager of the Spa in Charvet, various British university ski trips are also expected in Arc 1800 this week...

To celebrate Paradiski's 10th anniversary, there will be a tightrope walk between the cabins of the cable cars, by what are billed in the press release as "the world's greatest": Julien Millot and Tancrede Melet.  They will be 380m above the ground, and it may look something like this:



The two Vanoise Express cabins will also have a makeover, in the form of designs by Jean-Charles de Castelbajac which will be in place all season.

Apart from that, the only other "nouveaté" is in the form of a small draglift above the Replat lift in Villaroger and some behind-the-scenes work to the artificial snow-making. The big changes this year are over in La Plagne, which sees defunct black pistes re-appearing and a reshuffling of the lifts ahead of the opening of the Montalbert telecabine in 2014: more here.

Panic on the pistes of La Plagne:
The black Derochoir piste

Big changes are being planned for Les Arcs, however, with the Chantel area due for a complete overhaul.  Here is the planning permission application for the new "Telecabine des Villards".  But this  is only part of the story...

PEISEY-VALLANDRY

Peisey-Vallandry used to be a bit of a backwater, tucked away at the far end of Les Arcs' skiing, with some brilliant red runs served by ancient chairlifts.

Today it's most certainly on the up - the Dutch are particularly in love with it, and the arrival of the Vanoise Express link has been followed by more developments, including a Club Med and some new lifts.

It's probably not the place for beginners - the nursery slopes are good, but at the top of the chairlifts, which is hardly ideal.  And there is much cheaper accommodation available in Les Arcs.  Getting to know the local place names: Landry, Plan-Peisey, Peisey-Nancroix, Vallandry....it's something of a challenge.  Minor niggles aside, it certainly has a lot going for it.

1.  The Climb Up

For cyclists, this is a not particularly well-known route.  Most people take the main road to Les Arcs and remind themselves of where Indurain came to grief in 1996.  This is a much tougher climb, with more hairpins, steeper gradients and a nightmare last 3kms.  You can continue the torment by cycling onwards via Arc 1800 and 1600 to the savage climb that runs from Comborciere to Arc 2000.  In winter, you will need chains if it snows.  No question!

2.  The Nancroix valley

This is the gateway to the Vanoise national park from this part of the Tarentaise.  There are loads of beautiful walks in summer, and in winter it's a mecca for ski de fond and biathlon.

3.  An Old Village

The ski resorts of Plan Peisey and Vallandry are basically new, and have been developed since the 1980s.  But there is a genuinely old and characterful village of Peisey-Nancroix just below, at 1300m, and served by a small bucket lift.  Together with Villaroger, this is really the only rustic option on the Les Arcs side of Paradiski.

4.  The New Lift

Suddenly, Peisey is at the centre of things - if you do want to cover the La Plagne-Les Arcs circuit, this is the place to do it.

5.  Flattering Red Runs

There is a pretty extensive selection of red runs served by the three main chairlifts - they tend to be fairly quiet, and are great after a snowfall.  Can be icy lower down, mind, and beware the lower section of the blue Retour Peisey run - probably the hardest blue in the resort!

6.  La Combe

A wonderful red run away from the lifts.  With a guide you can ski to....

7.  Notre-Dame-des-Vernettes

Also a great summer excursion - for example it's about half an hour downhill from the top of the Vallandry lift.  Or you can take the easy walk from Peisey.  Or you can take a much longer walk from the top of the Transarc.  Which brings us to:

8.   1000m of descent

The run from the top of the Transarc, at 2600m, to the Hotel de la Vanoise, and a nice lunch, is a minor classic.  

9.   New lifts

With the advent of the new Grizzly lift a few years ago (built to serve the Club Med development), and the arrival of Le Derby (the key link to Arc 1800/2000), queues are now rarely an issue.

10.  A local website

www.peisey-info.com complements the official site nicely!

THEN AND NOW: The Les Arcs ski area 2002-2012

Without wanting to stretch any metaphor too far, Les Arcs has certain similarities with Tottenham Hotspur: one of the best known resorts in France, yes.  But perhaps not always seen as among the best.  Click here to see which resorts are Manchester United, Chelsea etc...

Both have seen pretty rapid progression in recent years, and both now can make claim to a Champions' League place.

A glance at the 2002 lift map for Les Arcs is a reminder of what's changed.  Lots of this development was powered by the Arc 1950 development, and the Compagnie des Alpes, which now has a near-monopoly on the big resorts, has continued to invest.

In 2002:

• There was no Vagere chairlift at 1800.  The "Vagere" lift(s) were drag lifts, at the top of the golf course
• There were two slow old chairs going out of 1800 - the Chantel and the Carreley: the latter has now been taken down
• There was no Droset lift to bring you back to Arc 2000 from Villaroger - you had to ski round to Pre St Esprit
• The Marmottes lifts in 2000 were drag lifts; there was now Arc 1950 at this time!
• There was no Grizzly lift; there was a chair from the middle of the Peisey-Vallandry mountain, which is now no more
• There was a Gollet chair out of 1600 - an old 2 man.  This was taken down a few years ago, much to the irritation of some of the proprieteres
• Various lifts which were slow have now been replaced by detachable fast chairs.  These include:
• Grizzly
• Peisey
• Marmottes
• The Derby
• Bois de l'Ours
• Mont Blanc
• Arcabulle
• Mont Blanc
• Indeed, the entire mountain is now covered by fast lifts, with the only weak links really now in the area below 2000: the Pre St Esprit and Comborciere are agonisingly slow.  Other slow lifts remain (eg Renard, Villards) but they play a supporting rather than pivotal role.
• This is of course leaving out the arrival of the Vanoise Express and Paradiski...

View from Montchauvin, January 2012

More on the history of the ski area in the 1970s and 1980s here.

And for a potted history of each lift, click here.

A Note on the Piste Maps

In 2002 the piste map was presented on two sides - the 1600/1800 on one side, the 2000 area on the other - which amplified the size of the ski area.

Today's "Freestyle Park" was called the "Espace Surf".

The map was presented "avec Playstation".  It still is.

There is a lovely blue from the bottom of the Combe run in Peisey.  This has been decommissioned for 2011/12, which is a shame - a new, slightly less interesting, red run has been created slightly higher up.

The 2011/12 map includes La Plagne's pistes on the other side - which works better than the unreadable "Paradiski" map.  A month into the season, the Les Arcs website has yet to put the new map on the site.  So, here's the 2010/11 map.

CA PLANE POUR MOI: 50 years of La Plagne

La Plagne celebrated its 50th birthday this week.  Le Dauphine looks back on the festivities here, with more than 2,000 people visiting the front de neige at Plagne Centre - as witnessed by TV Mont Blanc.

It all started as a regeneration project, pure and simple, with Dr Pierre Borionne, maire of Aime looking to stem depopulation of the valley.  Agriculture was no longer able to offer a living to the young, and the local mining industry was in crisis.  If you are keen, you can find out more at the museum named after Le Docteur, down in Aime.  The resort launched, with 2 drag lifts and 4 pistes, on 24 December 1961, according to its entry in Wikipedia.  Fifty years on, it is of course one of France's top ski resorts, linked to Les Arcs by the unique Vanoise Express.  More on the skiing here.



This 8-minute video, made by the Conseil General de la Savoie, includes interviews with the founders.  They remind us that in the early 1960s there was basically no such thing as skiing in the valley, and there were certainly no ski instructors.

The video also includes an interview with Herve Gaymard, president of the Conseil General, who describes the birth of La Plagne as "a big moment in the history of Savoie's ski resorts"; Courchevel and Val d'Isere were already established, but this was before the advent of Les Arcs, Les Menuires, Val Thorens, Valmorel etc.  He also goes on to look ahead to the next 50 years:

• The focus will be on "sustainable development"
• They will be looking to renovate the existing apartments
• Any future building will be "hotels or gites" - ie they will only allow the building of "lits chauds" which will have occupants through the season.  There is a clear plan to move away from "lits froids" - apartments which are only used by their owners for a week or two each season, a concern which is also evident in other resorts like Les Arcs

2012 will see the 25th anniversary of one of the great stages of the Tour de France: "and just who is that coming up behind.....IT'S STEPHEN ROCHE!!!  It will also be 10 years since Michael Boogerd won in La Plagne in an epic solo breakaway.  And of course there was Laurent Fignon's victory there in 1984.  Forget La Toussuire - history suggests it's high time for a repeat visit to La Plagne in the very near future.

You can keep up-to-date with La Plagne at the excellent www.perso-laplagne.fr.

IS THE VANOISE EXPRESS THE HUMBER BRIDGE OF SKIING?

This may be a little harsh on the Vanoise Express, but there are times when one wonders whether, like the Humber Bridge, there really has been a return on investment.....

No doubt the Compagnie des Alpes, owners of the lift system in both La Plagne and Les Arcs, would disagree.  Its opening, in 2003, saw the creation of France's 3rd largest ski area, in the rather blandly titled Paradiski.  And its closure for the 2007-8 season was certainly met with gloom and despondency by local shopkeepers and traders.

You can read more about the technical specifications associated with the 4-minute ride across the Nancroix valley here.  And here's a link to the Lord-of-the-Rings-inspired Paradiski website.

The prevailing view seems to be that more go from the La Plagne side to Les Arcs than the other way round.  That said, it never seems to be particularly busy.

Rather than the Humber Bridge, perhaps the better analogy is with the Gateshead-Newcastle "Winking Eye" bridge: it links the two cities in a powerful and iconic way, without ever having too many making the crossing!

In this vein, here are some mountain bikers doing some very silly tricks earlier in the summer.

Looking back at Peisey Vallandry