THE LES ARCS A-Z: A Guide for 2012

Here's an attempt at a guide to Les Arcs and the surrounding area....

Architecture - 3 sites in Les Arcs have been awarded the label of "Architecture of the 20th Century": the sites of Arc 1600/1800, the town hall and cinema in Bourg St Maurice and the Aiguille Rouge cable car station - overview here

Bourg St Maurice - "la montagne dans la ville", gateway to Les Arcs

Cycling - Les Arcs was the scene of Indurain's downfall; La Plagne of historic performances by Roche, Fignon and Boogerd

Domaine Skiable - here is the 2010/11 plan des pistes; the Les Arcs website has been a bit slack and hasn't put up the new 2011/12 one up yet - and there are a few changes, for example in the Mont Blanc area above Arc 1600

Edenarc - you can buy your new flat here and look back at what might have been, with Charlotte Perriand's original design here

Funiculaire - "unique in France", with a new makeover.  Timetable here

Golf des Arcs - a beautiful site, 32 holes, open from June until les premieres neiges

Arc 1800 runs to resort, on the golf course

Hauteville Gondon - home village of Robert Blanc, founder of Les Arcs

Infos practiques - on the Les Arcs website

Jeux Olympiques - the speed skiing was at Les Arcs, and saw a tragedy on the morning of the event

Killy - as in Espace Killy - about 40 mins up the road from Bourg

League Tables - Alpe d'Huez beats all the Tarentaise resorts, and is a brilliant all-rounder, summer as well as winter - see rankings here

Manchester United - cf Val d'Isere.  France's best ski resorts are matched with their Premiership equivalents here

News - @ledauphine gives comprehensive coverage and will improve your French

Off-piste - there is a Bureau des Guides at 1800, and Arc Aventures also have specialists.  Here's a book for the armchair expert, in French but with some English summaries.  It's available in resort

Aiguille Rouge summit: 3220m

Plagne - as in La Plagne - Les Arcs' local rivals...

Quecha - the low-cost Decathlon range.  The shop in Albertville (just off the RN90) is very good and sells ski de fond, ski rando equipment etc, which can be hard to find in the resorts



Rosiere - as in La Rosiere - distinctly under-rated - my favourite (apart from Les Arcs, of course).  Great views in both directions towards both La Plagne and Tignes, as well as the link with La Thuile to explore

La Rosiere: looking up the valley towards Tignes

Society and Politics - against an uncertain economic background, the area is not short of heated debates about which direction/s it should take in future - overview here

Tignes - just up the road.  Park at Les Brevieres

U - as in Super-U on the Route des Arcs at the edge of Bourg St Maurice

Valmorel - a resort on the up, with a new Club Med, new lifts, and handier for the airport than the Haute Tarentaise - quick review here

Websites - official Les Arcs site is more style than substance, but others compensate

X-ray - main cabinet medical is close to the Cachette lift in Arc 1600.  Will cost you several hundred pounds to be taken down the mountain by a hunky pisteur

Y - La Grotte du Yeti appears to be a chain of bars - with branches in Arc 1800, Les 2 alpes, St Francois Longchamp etc

Z - As in Zinedine Zidane - the France football team often train at Tignes, for example before their ill-fated trip to South Africa....

WHAT'S NEW IN LES ARCS

Here are 6 things which are new in Les Arcs for 2011/12:

1.  Snow

After last year's debacle, the arrival of l'or blanc is THE big news.  Last year, there was no snowfall of note between the end of December and June (sic).  This Christmas sees snow depths of 300cms at the top, more than Val d'Isere and Tignes and far more than in Austria and Switzerland.  Here is Place Miravidi in 1800:

2. Changing hands (i): Hotel du Golf

The "anchor" hotel of 1800 has changed hands, and is now owned by the Groupe Temmos.  They are looking to change the ambiance a little, making it more "welcoming" and less formal.  Sadly this means the charismatic bar host and ace monoskier Pierre-Yves no longer appears to be part of the hotel's plans.  They seem to be having a promising start, and they have some quite competitive half-board deals if you book direct. Hotel du Golf's website here.

3.  Changing hands (ii): Aux Enfants Terribles

The restaurant formerly known as La Poudreuse, on the slopes above Peisey-Vallandry, is now re-named and under new ownership.  Indeed it is now under the same ownership as the Arpette restaurant below the 1600/1800 snowpark.  It boasts a newly wood-cladded exterior and "cosy" bar.

4.  Just open: Edenarc

The Edenarc development is now starting to come on stream, and it looks like Stage 1 is now open.  At least I did see some skiers going in there, and a light burning inside.  It does feel quite lonely and isolated at the moment, a bit like the kind of place Scooby and co would show up at on a stormy night.  If you've got the cash, I'd wait until a later phase, by which time the hot-tubs etc will presumably be bubbling away happily.

By the way, you can see the original Charlotte Perriand design for this site here:

5.  Coming soon: A new 4-star at Charmettoger

The much-loved Aiguille Grive restaurant is now long gone, and 2012/13 will presumably see the opening of this new hotel-restaurant.  You can have a sneak preview by turning left on the main run back to Arc 1800.  It looks like it will be a fair old size.  And it looks like the design will be at least paying some reference to the "Les Arcs" pointy style.

6.  Ride in Style: The newly "pimped" funiculaire

The funiculaire from Bourg St Maurice is proudly deemed to be "unique en France".  It has been given a new coat of paint, which proclaims its "environmentally friendly" credentials.

  

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.

THE BIG SOCIETY AUX ARCS: Heated Debates

We have endless books and articles in English about how much greener things are on the other side of the Channel.  "The quality of life is so much better, the pace of life is slower, people are happier.  Not like over here...."  The reality is of course rather more mundane.

Bourg St Maurice is an isolated and not particularly wealthy town.  Tourism is of course the key sector, offering loads of seasonal work.  But the ski market has peaked, at least for now.  And it faces the forthcoming closure of the Chasseurs Alpins military base. More here.

With all this comes the issues, controversies and political disputes - large and small - that we will all be used to.  Here are five of them.

1.  Parking

A big issue where I live in Barnet - and a big issue in Bourg St Maurice-Les Arcs too.  A couple of years ago the local council declared that it could no longer afford the several hundred thousand euros a year cost of clearing up the snow.  Outrage ensued as plans for a new peage-style barrier at Arc 1800 took shape.  There were brief celebrations as the technology failed shortly after opening, but now the system is well and truly working. And both locals and proprieteres are not happy.  More on the practicalities of parking here.

2.  Les Proprieteres en colere


As Billy Bragg says, "There is Power in a Union".  You can join the Union des Proprieteres pour la Defense des Arcs (UPDA) here.  They, alongside the ADS (lift company) and the mairie, form a triange of interests who do not always get on.  Recent debates have included a long-running dispute called the "Affaire du Golf" which resulted in money being returned to the proprieteres, parking at Villards (which has witnessed something of a saga around both the old and new car parks) and the more recent "save the Maitaz" campaign (see below).

If you do park at the open-air site at Charvet, you may find yourself walking along a desolate pedestrian tunnel, then taking a lift up to the centre station.  There has been a huge argument here re who is responsible for its upkeep, this time between the local authority and the residents of the Pierra Menta block through which the lift runs.  As far as I can see, the proprieteres emerged as winners.

3.  Chantel

This is only a minor dispute these days in that the Edenarc plans have been in place for many years, and development has only really been delayed by slow sales.  Some locals and fans of the original Les Arcs architecture are unhappy - Claudie Blanc, for example.

That said, there were always plans to build on the Chantel site, even though it means the destruction of some very beautiful tennis courts.  Charlotte Perriand's original design for the site is here.

4.  New developments

You can read more about current and future developments, including the new lift at 1600 here.

Today's heated debate is all about the future of the Maitaz site, which is on the green piste to Villandry.  The discussions surround whether it is such a good idea to bulldoze such a beautiful site at a time when so much of the resort is empty for so much of the year.  This time the villain in many people's eyes is the Landy mairie.  You can read more at the Sauver La Maitaz Facebook page, and see the impact on the Route des Espagnols (aka the piste) here.  It looks like a debate which will run and run.

5.  Politics

Bourg St Maurice and the surrounding valley is traditionally a right-wing stronghold - Sarkozy recorded 60% in the last presidentielle.

2011 saw a political crisis which resulted in a third of the local councillors resigning as the Damien Perry-Daniel Payot administration collapsed in a Savoyard version of the TB-GBs.  This saw an un-triumphant return of former mayor and Jacqueline Poletti in a landslide victory, registering 61% of the vote.

THE STORY OF LES ARCS: The Old Ski Area

La Plagne, along with George Clooney, celebrates its 50th anniversary this year.  Back in 1961 things were also developing up the road in Bourg St Maurice, albeit in a quieter way.

The Espace Arcadien website tells the story, with the aid of some great pictures, and then goes on to provide what is probably the only history of how the lift system in Les Arcs has evolved over the years.

Back in those snowier days there was a piste right down to 800m, the foot of the new chairlift, by the Montrigon bridge.  A second chairlift went from Les Granges up to Courbaton.  By the mid-1960s various draglifts had opened up skiing on the Arpette plateau (site of today's Snowpark; see below).

Some other highlights (!):

1.  A cable car was built from Bourg St Maurice to Arc 1600 in 1974.  It closed a year after the opening of the funiculaire, in 1990.  This suggests its return on investment was, er, not very good.  You can see the old gare on the left of the tracks as you arrive at 1600.  If, like me, you have nothing better to do, you can take a ride on the funiculaire here.

2.  The Espace Arcadien site also provides a photographic record of the construction of your favourite lifts, including the Transarc (1992), Varet (1999) and Vagere (2003).  They don't seem to be updating the site at the moment, but the new lift at 1600 means that fast lifts now cover pretty much the whole ski area, with Pre St Esprit and Comborciere the only weak links remaining.

THE STORY OF LES ARCS: Interview with Claudie Blanc

Claudie Blanc, daughter of Robert Blanc (founder of Les Arcs) is a communications professional and the subject of an interview in this month's edition of the excellent Alpes magazine.  There's lots here to on the birth of Les Arcs - more in her feature-length book: Shepherds' Dream...

It's a very different story to that of neighbouring La Plagne, for example, which is documented (in French and with fab photos) here.

Here are some key points from the Les Arcs story.

* She spent her early years at Courchevel 1850, where family friends included a certain Jean-Claude Kily - "really sympa, a lovely guy".  The Blanc family was originally from Hauteville-Gondon - a small farming village just outside Bourg St Maurice.

* She was (and remains) uber-proud of her father - who at that time symbolised the spirit of the pulls rouges of the ESF - who knew how to trampoline and get the animation of the resort going just as as well as they knew how to ski.

* Robert Blanc's expeditions in the high mountains had another goal:

"My father was exploring the future ski area of Les Arcs, and looking to convince people to invest in his dream: creating his station on his mountains of the Arc.  My mother told me this was non-negotiable for him.  He just had to find the right partner".

* Enter Roger Godino, a brilliant mind, educated in the US.

"This is what appears to me to be extraordinary in the whole story - it's that at this time a shepherd-come-ski instructor and an intellectual machine like Godino [who became the promoter of Les Arcs] were able to get on as equals.  Each knew and admired the talents of the other."

* Once the resort was estabished, Godino encouraged Blanc to concentrate on what he was best at: innovation.  It was clear that management of the ski area was not really his thing.

"With another ski-instructor friend, they conceived the ski evolutif methd which got people skiiing in 3 days using short skis.  Les Arcs was 30 years ahead.  The spirit of Les Arcs was to dare and to enjoy oneself."

* And then the unimaginable happened: on the 4 Feb 1980, Blanc was killed by an avalanche during an operation on the road up to Arc 2000.

* Her cv includes:

- born 1959 at Albertville
- 1973-77: in the France "B" ski team
- 1983-6: took part in the "Apocalypse Snow" films, shot in Les Arcs
- 1986-91: journalist at Ski Francais
- 1991-2: worked on communications at the Albertville Olympics
- Since 1995, various roles in Savoie tourism
- Since July 2011: deputy mayor at Hauteville-Gondon

* * *

There's lots more on Robert Blanc in the book.  He's certainly THE father-figure of the station, with his photo present in many of the shops and bars.  It reminds me a bit of the photos of Tito I recall from childhood visits to Yugoslavia.

What's not in here is the story of the landslide on the Les Arcs road, how the dreams of Les Arcs came crashing down with the resort almost going bust, or indeed her strong views on the current Edenwest development!  For another day....

LES ARCS IN PICTURES: The Architecture

Les Arcs comes in for some criticism, at least from British visitors.  There was, however, a very clear plan:

*  To build something which fitted into the scenery, particularly when you are above the resort (contrast the scene below with what you see from the Funiplagne above Plagne Centre....)
*  To become a viable rival to some of the other, more established resorts.  This meant attracting the "middle market" of people who were (at the time) not taking ski holidays
*  To build a "station integree", with everything close at hand, away from cars etc
*  To make use of the latest building techniques, and (at the time) some of the latest latest architectural thinking

The resort's founder, Robert Blanc, was supported in his mission by two of France's leading architects, Charlotte Perriand and Bernard Taillefer, who loved the mountains, and who led the design of Arc 1600 (Perriand) and 1800 (where Taillefer designed the buildings and Perriand the interiors).  More on Charlotte Perriand here.  If you are familiar with the Edenarc development, you may also enjoy a snoop at Charlotte's original design for the Chantel site.   Finally, there is a useful section on the Les Arcs website here.

There are a series of phases to modern-day Les Arcs: 1968 (Arc 1600), 1974 (Arc 1800), 1979 (Arc 2000), 2003 (Arc 1950).  Below is a shot of Arc 1800 in the summer.

Perriand and Taillefer were not involved in Tignes, by the way.  Here is Val Claret:

Here is one of the most celebrated blocks in 1600, with views back up the Tarentaise:

Also at 1600 are these smaller apartments, just beside the Cachette lift:

The main "historic" blocks at 1800 are Belles Challes (below), Lauzieres and Pierra Menta.  The latter two are (in the main) studios of 30m squared, and sleep 5 (at a push). Belles Challes is a little more modest.

If you are keen, you can take a "historic walk" around the Charvet area of 1800 - to learn more.  Apparently it is now part of the Patrimonie du XXc.

The blocks in 1800 are large, but cut into the hill.  Charlotte Perriand was keen that they were not overlooked by other blocks, so that, from the kitchen, you could look out at the mountain landscape.  Below: Pierra Menta, with Mont Blanc straight ahead and the Arc 1800 ecole on the right.

In the summer, or indeed in winter if you are an off-piste skier, you can compare all this 

with what has been here for centuries - the sanctuary of Notre-Dame des Vernettes, 

in the Nancroix valley.  This is accessible from the Combe run above Peisey.

The interiors of the Les Arcs projet are worth a look - but this is probably 

enough for one day!

Click here for The Architecture: Part 2