FOR THE MONEY AND THE FEW

This season sees the lift company "revolutionising its ski pass" set-up.

It involves the depressing prospect of "priority lanes" around the resort.  Which takes us some way from the idea of skiing for the masses which powered the development of Les Arcs and its neighbours in the 1960s and 1970s.

There will also be an express route for skiers wanting to access the Aiguille Rouge cable car.  In principle this may not be a such bad idea as it gets so packed, even out of high season, that some kind of rationing is probably needed.

The general idea seems to be to persuade people to buy the full Paradiski pass rather than (as most skiers do) just getting a Les Arcs/Peisey Vallandry ticket.  In recent years, those buying a 3 day pass have been given rights to have a day in La Plagne as part of the deal.  That seems to have gone.

The executive option doesn't look worth the extra unless you are a keen swimmer or sledging fan.

For more details see the Les Arcs press pack.

ALPINE LEGENDS: Marketing the mega resorts

The first snowfalls have started to appear on the tops.  The new edition of Where to Ski and Snowboard is out.  Britain itself faces "months" of heavy snow.  Time to look ahead to season 2015/2016.

Val Thorens last week. Source: Val Thorens Tourist Office

The big marketing news is the arrival of the new Alpine Legends pass.  The chance to enjoy Paradiski, Espace Killy and the 3 Valleys on a single ticket.  In return for a 340€ six-day pass, the winter visitor now can now take advantage of the 391 lifts, 1300 ski runs, 5 glaciers the three areas have to offer.

"It's a unique product with a unique target market", says the website sniffily, in response to the "FAQ" asking why there are no discounts for children, seniors or groups.  Quite what that target market is, who knows.

Here are the prices for day tickets in each of the mega-areas covered:

Espace Killy: €54€
Paradiski €57 (50€ for Les Arcs/Peisey only)
3 Valleys: €59

By my maths, the cost of simply buying day passes in the area you want to ski in is practically identical, but maybe I am missing something.  I imagine relatively few people will want to ski in one area in the morning and another in the afternoon?  Even rally driving from Les Granges above Arc 1600 to Les Brevieres at Tignes is still likely to take an hour or so out of the day....

Note: if you are visiting Les Arcs for the week, you'd be far better spending a day in La Rosiere or Sainte-Foy-Tarentaise than trekking up to Tignes - the two smaller resorts offering a change of pace and a different experience.

Anyway, it all seems harmless marketing spin, and with the decline in the  ski market witnessed in recent years, everyone is thinking about how they can increase their market share and/or win back some of the lost skiers.

There is now a real gulf in prices between the big league resorts and the next level down.  A 6 day Paradiski pass will set you back €291.  Set his against relative neighbours Les Saisies, Le Norma and Aussois, and the southern resorts of Auron, Isola 2000 and Le Sauze.  These are all credible resorts, which were all offering six-day passes for under €150 last season.

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...

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...

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.

LES ARCS: 2011/12

Les Arcs opens its doors to skiers on 10 December (review of last season here).  A few things to look out for this winter:

Things kick off with the not-exactly-world-famous Les Arcs Film Festival , which runs between 10-17 December.  There will be 60 films, with a special focus on Italy.  There's a bit of a debate about whether the Festival is proving to be a worthwhile initiative, but the commitment has been made, and it's into its 3rd year now.  And, although early season snow has been patchy in recent years, it's a good excuse for pre-Xmas visit.  Tignes will also be open.

At Arc 1800, the big news this season is the opening of the long-awaited (by some, anyway) Edenarc apartments at the top of the Chantel lift.  It took a number of years to sell enough units off-plan, but now the chantier has begun, and stage 1 will be open in December, apparently.  Lots more on this at the Edenarc web site which includes a new webcam, showing where they've got to with the works, as well as the beautiful tennis court which will soon fall victim to the bulldozer :(

More noticeable to skiers will be the new lift at 1600, which will replace the old Mont Blanc chair, and open up the Deux-Tetes area.  The entire 1600-1800-Peisey Vallandry flank of the mountain (by far the most rewarding part of the ski area) is now covered by fast lifts.  For more, see the Building for the Future in Les Arcs posting.

Les Arcs wouldn't be the place it is without Paradiski and its wonderful marketing.  You can see this year's delightful "Lord of the Rings" promo here.  And, perhaps more to the point, we now have the opportunity to take advantage of the newly launched app.

To "reach out" to fellow Brits with news and views on Les Arcs, you can join the SnowHeads ski forum for Les Arcs here.

Finally, some more links to the various websites around the valley.  The official site is at www.lesarcs.com.

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