Our First Time in Les Deux Alpes

07/03/25

With the snow rapidly disappearing from lower slopes, and sun forecast for at least the next week, we had to find somewhere with high altitude slopes. We’d been hoping to move on into Italy but the resorts of the Milky Way were looking no better than Mongenevre. Instead we set our sights for the high altitude resort of Les Deux Alpes (or Les2Alpes, or even just 2 according to the marketing). It wasn’t our first choice of destinations but as it ascends to over 3600m and has glacier skiing it felt like a good option when there was so little decent snow elsewhere.

Getting to Les2Alpes

We made our way back to Briançon where we attempted another load of laundry. This time we were better prepared, putting the washing in the machine as soon as we got to the supermarket and then popping in to do our shopping. We weren’t prepared for a cold tumble dryer though. After 40 minutes we found our washing tumbled but still cold and damp. We wondered if we had forgotten to set the temperature and paid for another 10 minutes to see. It was still stone cold.

Briançon does have an alternative laundrette so we headed into town where Paul was expecting to have to drop me off and circle back round to pick me up later. Our new van did its job though, fitting (just about) into one of the few spaces in front of the Carrefour City in the town centre. There is no way we’d have managed that in Bertie. A twenty minute blast in a blessedly hot tumble dryer and we were on our way with clean dry clothes.

Then we were re-tracing our steps further, past Serre Chevalier and back over the Col du Lauterets where we failed to find a parking space to enjoy lunch as it was so busy. All along our route we could see the evidence of the sunny weather and lack of snow, with bare ground and grass where there had been snow a few weeks previously.

We left the D1091 at the end of the nearly empty reservoir of the Lac du Chambon and started the climb up to Les2Alpes. The road up was very easy for a mountain road; past the village of Mont-de-Lans with the lowest chairlift in the ski area, getting glimpses of the ribbon of snow that is the red run back down to the village, unsurprisingly very quiet, skirting the next village of Bons, and finally reaching the entrance to Les Deux Alpes.

Les Deux Alpes aire

We were prepared for the aire to be busy as it’s no longer very big. The large carpark that used to allow motorhomes in the whole area is now separated into four sections. A small car park at the entrance, a large coach area next, and then the motorhome aire. Beyond the aire is the seasonal workers area with a height barrier that has to be opened by the local authority.

The aire has electricity terminals on one side that provide 12 hook-up points. The other side was being worked on while we were there and it looks like two more bollards are being installed. In the coach area there are a further four EHU bollards sadly taped up with red ‘No Motorhome’ signs affixed. Maybe these will be freed up in Summer but it does look as though the separation of the different areas is being made more formal and in fact new signage went up while we were there.

Brand new signage that just popped up

Fortunately for us there were only a handful of vans in the aire and so we had a choice of parking spots and hookup. As we headed into the weekend the spaces slowly filled up. Even the unpopular spaces under the chairlift were taken (dropped poles are definitely a thing, imagine the dent if one lands on your roof). In fact 16 vans were squeezed in tightly together and hookups were being shared with the use of splitters.

Life on the Les Deux Alpes aire

We spent a week in the aire at Les Deux Alpes, it was sunny all week -again. I know, I shouldn’t complain,  as soon as it starts raining or snowing we’ll be yearning for the sun again.

Sitting in the sun

Of course I had to work for a couple of days during that time, we also had a few bits of life admin to attend to. Not least cutting Paul’s hair and beard which had become pretty wild. At least it was warm and sunny so Paul could sit outside while I wielded the trimmers. He had to fix them first though, not the first time that these trimmers have needed some TLC and I think a new set will be procured once we’re back home. They’ve lasted for at least 15 years so we’ve definitely had our money’s worth, but I keep imagining Paul being left half trimmed when they break down for the final time.

The helipad is right next door to the aire so a lot of our time was spent watching the helicopters to-ing and fro-ing. They rarely seemed to stop, but some of that might have been because they were also serving the slopes of Alpe d’Huez which we could see on the horizon. When we went for a walk around the hill we got a view of someone being dropped off in a stretcher. The helicopter was already taking off before the patient was stretchered into the ambulance. We are very thankful that we haven’t had an accident on the mountain, we always buy the additional insurance cover with our lift passes so that we know we won’t be slapped with a massive bill if we ever do need to be airlifted off the mountain. We’re probably over-insured if anything, with lift pass insurance, ski holiday insurance and GHIC card, but I’d rather that way around.

Walking around the mountain with views over to Alpe d’Huez

Skiing at Les Deux Alpes

This week was still school holidays in France. Also in Belgium, as we found out when several Belgian coaches arrived. The resort was busy but the ski area is large and once everyone was spread out we were easily able to find quieter slopes, especially off the blue runs.

Getting to the slopes from the aire was really easy. We could walk out to the car park entrance and ski down to the Petite Aiguille lift. From the top of that lift it was an easy ski down a green track to the centre of the resort where we had several options to take us up to the higher slopes. This included the modern Jandri lift which was fast but had massive queues in the morning. After experiencing the queues, the likes of which we haven’t seen since our days of skiing in Borovets, we made sure to start as early as possible which was definitely the answer. The petite Aiguille lift started at 8:45 and we were on it!

Queues!

To get back to the aire we could have skied down the Acces Valle Blanche run, but it was pretty slushy by the end of the day. Instead we used the free bus service around the town to drop us off back at the car park. That also meant we could pop to the shops before returning to the van and pick up the obligatory baguette (and maybe some patisserie).

It’s obvious that there has been massive investment in Les Deux Alpes. I think this is something we’re likely to see in all high altitude ski areas. The lift system is well designed and there were plenty of staff around the resort, managing lift queues, manning information stations, cleaning the indoor areas. I wasn’t expecting to like the area after warnings that it was over commercialised, but actually I thought it was excellently organised and I would definitely go back.