Shine On – Les Portes du SoleilExcerpts from a perfect day
The doors to the sun, or natively, Les Portes du Soleil, is one of the largest, and most popular, linked areas to snowboard in the world. From Avoriaz to Morgins the terrain has been crying out to shredders for years and regularly appears in mags and vids across the globe, offering, as it does, an abundance of creative slopes, transitions, features and a plentiful dusting of snow.
British snowboarders, and Brits in general, have been flocking to the assorted hamlets, villages and towns of Les Portes du Soleil for a very long time. Their number is so vast in Morzine that you’ll be hard-pressed to go a day without bumping into a chalet-owner, cook, transfer driver or holiday-maker not hailing from Britain’s fair shores.
The most common starting points for a holiday are the busy winter town of Morzine and the purpose built resort of Avoriaz, but the linked area actually hosts a total of 12 separate resorts and a whopping 650km of linked trails.
It is also crawling with snowboard parks. In Avoriaz alone you’ll find five; then nip across the border into Switzerland and the infamous Crosets park; and now fully into the swing of things, Super-Châtel and Les Gets both host a worthy offering.
Add this to the rolling and gentle topography of the mountains and you have the perfect freestyle arena. The variety of terrain is so diverse that if jumping and jibbing are your leaning then you can very quickly find something to ride or build. Whatever the weather, come rain or shine, there is a park or zone to suit your needs.
This Franco-Swiss domain lies between the flatland plains surrounding the Swiss city of Geneva and Western Europe’s biggest body of freshwater in Lake Léman, and Europe’s tallest asset, the mighty Mont Blanc, in France. The mountain encircling mountain range offers an unimposing beauty and the only thing this part of the Chablais Alps doesn’t really cater for is high Alpine riding, which serious freeriders will miss. But in terms of good terrain, that is literally littered with hits across every piste, you are spoilt.
The highest lift is capped at a little under 2500m, and with terrain of a more rolling than steep variety, a cruisy vibe permeates the mountains. They are distinctly less ominous than the sheer-sided valleys of Chamonix and Les 2 Alpes. If a stay in Morzine itself seems just a bit too close to home, and if Avoriaz looks scarily hedonistic, there are enough other villages to find somewhere to hang your hat.
/ THE TERRAIN PARKS
If you buy the full area lift ticket, you will be granted access to a plentiful and broad range of terrain parks. Avoriaz claims five-ish: The Arare park (big and cold in the winter), The Stash (it’s got wood), La Chapelle park (sunny and good for everyone), the Superpipe (it takes a long time to hold your own in the pipe) and for the rookies, the Thrasher
Snow Park and the Kids’ Parkway. Les Crosets basks in its reputation for big jumps but it does also offer a load of smaller features. Super-Châtel has a park these days and sometimes a leaning sort of a halfpipe and Les Gets also offers a mellow set of jumps and jibs.
By European standards, the variety of features is outstanding, although compared to the States and Canada, European parks consistently struggle to offer anything like as consistent a service. And unfortunately the main Arare park in Avoriaz isn’t getting the quality of attention it became famous for only a few years ago; the removal of the Poma lift on the looker’s left for one, has seen lap times escalate from a European record-breaker to a European painful average. That said, riders are flocking back to these parks every year.
Gilly Seagrave has been spending here winters in the area for years, “The Chapelle park is so easy to access that even on a day when I'm off somewhere else, I'll hit that park on the way out or the way home. Next is Les Crosets, my heart is there really; so many good memories and so much progression. It's the reason we first went to Avoriaz.”
/ JUST SHREDDING
But really, if you’re just after a decent snow park you’re better off heading to America. However, If you’re looking for a resort that has perfect terrain for building jumps; offers a concoction of small to massive cliffs; is littered with runs through the trees, rollers, pillow lines and everything in between: Les Portes du Soleil comes into its own. From the high cliffs in Avoriaz to the low trees in Ardent. From rollers and gullies in Châtel to some backcountry routes in Nyon and La Linga, there is a lot more to do here that lap the park. Mark Kent should know, he’s as much a part of the scenary over there as the wall,
"I generally think of the PDS backcountry as my park. It really is amazing.
If you don't believe me check Absinthe's new movie, Neverland."
If your tipple is piste jibbing then you are spoilt. In Avoriaz alone are an array of legendary mini-shred runs: Prolays for piste-side jibbing; Star Wars down to the Ardent bubble for leg-burning speed and the Les Prodains home run for hits, speed and a mogul challenge, and then there is the whole Fornet bowl area for pow or slushy days.
/ THE NIGHTLIFE
The nightlife across this area is broad. From sleepy tabacs and Pernod sipping nights in Montriond to the typical French bars and discos of Avoriaz and the coach loads of winter holiday makers – where you’ll find a party atmosphere pretty much everywhere you go.
Morzine probably offers the easiest middle-ground with some very French bars (if you look hard), pubs like the Dixie Bar (live music and Guiness), Bar Robinson (only open until 8pm, and with good reason). The Cavern Bar is a favourite and, according to Mike Austin, will “see even the most sedate of characters end up half-naked on the stage with a drink in each hand”.
For a more ‘sophisticated’ option, there’s a new wine bar called Coup de Coeur, which offers a more relaxing, less hedonistic evening of fun, with local tapas and wine on offer
Meanwhile, the other villages aren’t all sleepy bars and restaurants, in Châtel a new club has just opened, Sloopy’s, and it’s right in the Super-Châtel gondola lift building, open every night of the winter until 5am!
For a bit of grub L’Etale in Morzine offers well priced restaurant experience and down in St Jean d’Aulps, the National Bar sells much loved pizzas with free Pacman computer games to keep you entertained.
/ MIND THE GAP
The area is refulgent with tales of freestyle snowboarding; from the days of the snowboard store in Avoriaz, Street Trash, and the local French snowboarders like Nico Droz who made it their goal to pillage every last corner of the mountains to the ongoing assault by Absinthe and other international film crews. Burton film and photo shoots like the De Marchi / Droz gap became icons of the resort creating images that adorned billboards in Austria and only accelerated PDS’s notoriety.
Avoriaz hosted the Nixon Jib fest in 2002, a European first, and it had run the 5Star Swatch TTR O’Neil Pro every January until recent seasons. It has taken the rest of Europe a long time to catch up with the pro-active attitude Avoriaz applied to snowboarding from the out-set.
Mike Austin recounts entering one of the biggest competitions of his life,
“The O'Neil Pro was pretty eye-opening. I entered without really realising how high the standard was going to be. Scott McMorris qualified 4th in his heat I think. He stomped the smoothest run ever, all the other nationals were giving him props. It was so good to see. And there was me, stoked on my qualifier after a sick run but in a heat that was dominated by Scandinavians. They would all jibber-jabber on in languages I didn’t understand but with the odd English word here and there when they talked about tricks. But then all of a sudden, just as our runs were about to start, they all spoke perfect English and said loudly what run they were going to go for, "I'll do backside nine, switch backside nine to frontside seven". Yeah, yeah, I thought, that’s just banter to psyche other riders out. Then they dropped in – it wasn't banter.”
/ THE RESORTS
The 12 resorts making up the area are:
France
Avoriaz – www.avoriaz.com
Châtel – www.chatel.com
Les Gets – www.lesgets.com
Morzine – www.morzine-avoriaz.com
Abondance – www.abondance.org
La Chapelle d'Abondance – www.lachapelle74.com
St Jean d'Aulps – www.valleedaulps.com
Montriond – www.valleedaulps.com
Switzerland
Champéry – www.champery.ch
Morgins – www.morgins.ch
Torgon – www.torgon.ch
Champoussin-Les Crosets-Val d'Illiez – www.valdilliez.ch / lescrosets.ch
Les Portes du Soleil – www.portesdusoleil.com
/ HOW TO GET THERE
Fly
Fly to Geneva international airport – www.easyjet.com
Train
Take the train to Geneva or Cluses – www.raileurope.co.uk
Transfers
Transfer companies in the Portes du Soleil are a booming business. There is no shortage of companies to choose from and the fares tend to actually match the public bus services. Most chalets will offer airport transfers as part of the holiday deal but we’ve always found Ski Lifts to do a good job – www.ski-lifts.com
Les Portes du Soleil not what you're after? What about Tignes? Check the Document trip where we got dumped
Posted by name - Fri, 08/01/2010 - 11:13am
Excerpts from a perfect day
The doors to the sun, or natively, Les Portes du Soleil, is one of the largest, and most popular, linked areas to snowboard in the world. From Avoriaz to Morgins the terrain has been crying out to shredders for years and regularly appears in mags and vids across the globe, offering, as it does, an abundance of creative slopes, transitions, features and a plentiful dusting of snow.
British snowboarders, and Brits in general, have been flocking to the assorted hamlets, villages and towns of Les Portes du Soleil for a very long time. Their number is so vast in Morzine that you’ll be hard-pressed to go a day without bumping into a chalet-owner, cook, transfer driver or holiday-maker not hailing from Britain’s fair shores.
The most common starting points for a holiday are the busy winter town of Morzine and the purpose built resort of Avoriaz, but the linked area actually hosts a total of 12 separate resorts and a whopping 650km of linked trails.
It is also crawling with snowboard parks. In Avoriaz alone you’ll find five; then nip across the border into Switzerland and the infamous Crosets park; and now fully into the swing of things, Super-Châtel and Les Gets both host a worthy offering.
Add this to the rolling and gentle topography of the mountains and you have the perfect freestyle arena. The variety of terrain is so diverse that if jumping and jibbing are your leaning then you can very quickly find something to ride or build. Whatever the weather, come rain or shine, there is a park or zone to suit your needs.
This Franco-Swiss domain lies between the flatland plains surrounding the Swiss city of Geneva and Western Europe’s biggest body of freshwater in Lake Léman, and Europe’s tallest asset, the mighty Mont Blanc, in France. The mountain encircling mountain range offers an unimposing beauty and the only thing this part of the Chablais Alps doesn’t really cater for is high Alpine riding, which serious freeriders will miss. But in terms of good terrain, that is literally littered with hits across every piste, you are spoilt.
The highest lift is capped at a little under 2500m, and with terrain of a more rolling than steep variety, a cruisy vibe permeates the mountains. They are distinctly less ominous than the sheer-sided valleys of Chamonix and Les 2 Alpes. If a stay in Morzine itself seems just a bit too close to home, and if Avoriaz looks scarily hedonistic, there are enough other villages to find somewhere to hang your hat.
/ THE TERRAIN PARKS
If you buy the full area lift ticket, you will be granted access to a plentiful and broad range of terrain parks. Avoriaz claims five-ish: The Arare park (big and cold in the winter), The Stash (it’s got wood), La Chapelle park (sunny and good for everyone), the Superpipe (it takes a long time to hold your own in the pipe) and for the rookies, the Thrasher
Snow Park and the Kids’ Parkway. Les Crosets basks in its reputation for big jumps but it does also offer a load of smaller features. Super-Châtel has a park these days and sometimes a leaning sort of a halfpipe and Les Gets also offers a mellow set of jumps and jibs.
By European standards, the variety of features is outstanding, although compared to the States and Canada, European parks consistently struggle to offer anything like as consistent a service. And unfortunately the main Arare park in Avoriaz isn’t getting the quality of attention it became famous for only a few years ago; the removal of the Poma lift on the looker’s left for one, has seen lap times escalate from a European record-breaker to a European painful average. That said, riders are flocking back to these parks every year.
Gilly Seagrave has been spending here winters in the area for years, “The Chapelle park is so easy to access that even on a day when I'm off somewhere else, I'll hit that park on the way out or the way home. Next is Les Crosets, my heart is there really; so many good memories and so much progression. It's the reason we first went to Avoriaz.”
/ JUST SHREDDING
But really, if you’re just after a decent snow park you’re better off heading to America. However, If you’re looking for a resort that has perfect terrain for building jumps; offers a concoction of small to massive cliffs; is littered with runs through the trees, rollers, pillow lines and everything in between: Les Portes du Soleil comes into its own. From the high cliffs in Avoriaz to the low trees in Ardent. From rollers and gullies in Châtel to some backcountry routes in Nyon and La Linga, there is a lot more to do here that lap the park. Mark Kent should know, he’s as much a part of the scenary over there as the wall,
"I generally think of the PDS backcountry as my park. It really is amazing.
If you don't believe me check Absinthe's new movie, Neverland."
If your tipple is piste jibbing then you are spoilt. In Avoriaz alone are an array of legendary mini-shred runs: Prolays for piste-side jibbing; Star Wars down to the Ardent bubble for leg-burning speed and the Les Prodains home run for hits, speed and a mogul challenge, and then there is the whole Fornet bowl area for pow or slushy days.
/ THE NIGHTLIFE
The nightlife across this area is broad. From sleepy tabacs and Pernod sipping nights in Montriond to the typical French bars and discos of Avoriaz and the coach loads of winter holiday makers – where you’ll find a party atmosphere pretty much everywhere you go.
Morzine probably offers the easiest middle-ground with some very French bars (if you look hard), pubs like the Dixie Bar (live music and Guiness), Bar Robinson (only open until 8pm, and with good reason). The Cavern Bar is a favourite and, according to Mike Austin, will “see even the most sedate of characters end up half-naked on the stage with a drink in each hand”.
For a more ‘sophisticated’ option, there’s a new wine bar called Coup de Coeur, which offers a more relaxing, less hedonistic evening of fun, with local tapas and wine on offer
Meanwhile, the other villages aren’t all sleepy bars and restaurants, in Châtel a new club has just opened, Sloopy’s, and it’s right in the Super-Châtel gondola lift building, open every night of the winter until 5am!
For a bit of grub L’Etale in Morzine offers well priced restaurant experience and down in St Jean d’Aulps, the National Bar sells much loved pizzas with free Pacman computer games to keep you entertained.
/ MIND THE GAP
The area is refulgent with tales of freestyle snowboarding; from the days of the snowboard store in Avoriaz, Street Trash, and the local French snowboarders like Nico Droz who made it their goal to pillage every last corner of the mountains to the ongoing assault by Absinthe and other international film crews. Burton film and photo shoots like the De Marchi / Droz gap became icons of the resort creating images that adorned billboards in Austria and only accelerated PDS’s notoriety.
Avoriaz hosted the Nixon Jib fest in 2002, a European first, and it had run the 5Star Swatch TTR O’Neil Pro every January until recent seasons. It has taken the rest of Europe a long time to catch up with the pro-active attitude Avoriaz applied to snowboarding from the out-set.
Mike Austin recounts entering one of the biggest competitions of his life,
“The O'Neil Pro was pretty eye-opening. I entered without really realising how high the standard was going to be. Scott McMorris qualified 4th in his heat I think. He stomped the smoothest run ever, all the other nationals were giving him props. It was so good to see. And there was me, stoked on my qualifier after a sick run but in a heat that was dominated by Scandinavians. They would all jibber-jabber on in languages I didn’t understand but with the odd English word here and there when they talked about tricks. But then all of a sudden, just as our runs were about to start, they all spoke perfect English and said loudly what run they were going to go for, "I'll do backside nine, switch backside nine to frontside seven". Yeah, yeah, I thought, that’s just banter to psyche other riders out. Then they dropped in – it wasn't banter.”
/ THE RESORTS
The 12 resorts making up the area are:
France
Avoriaz – www.avoriaz.com
Châtel – www.chatel.com
Les Gets – www.lesgets.com
Morzine – www.morzine-avoriaz.com
Abondance – www.abondance.org
La Chapelle d'Abondance – www.lachapelle74.com
St Jean d'Aulps – www.valleedaulps.com
Montriond – www.valleedaulps.com
Switzerland
Champéry – www.champery.ch
Morgins – www.morgins.ch
Torgon – www.torgon.ch
Champoussin-Les Crosets-Val d'Illiez – www.valdilliez.ch / lescrosets.ch
Les Portes du Soleil – www.portesdusoleil.com
/ HOW TO GET THERE
Fly
Fly to Geneva international airport – www.easyjet.com
Train
Take the train to Geneva or Cluses – www.raileurope.co.uk
Transfers
Transfer companies in the Portes du Soleil are a booming business. There is no shortage of companies to choose from and the fares tend to actually match the public bus services. Most chalets will offer airport transfers as part of the holiday deal but we’ve always found Ski Lifts to do a good job – www.ski-lifts.com