Arêches-Beaufort

Maximum Descent

Why you should go there: The amount of great natural trails that are accessible with the public shuttle is amazing. Additionally, the bike park Les Saisies has a few very good trails that are worth a some hours of travel. 

As a starting point, you can either base yourself in Albertville or one of the mountain towns higher up. Even though Albertville has hosted the winter Olympics, it is quite small and not very picturesque. There is free a bus leaving several times a day from Albertville to Beaufort where you can change to other bus lines as well. If you want to enjoy a long run at the end of the day, it can make sense to base yourself down in Albertville. Stay higher up for the rustic mountain feeling. Most towns have a good bakery (well, we are in France) and a few decent restaurants. 

Who is it for: If love to maximise your downhill meters and you are a trained and technically fit rider, this is your location. In order to have fun, your bike should be equiped with decent brakes as you will need them almost permanently.

Who should avoid it: Beginners and riders with less technical abilities will have very few options here. Apart from a few runs in the bikepark, there is hardly anything that will make you happy. Additionally, if you look for flow trails and love to pedal, we would suggest to look elsewhere.

Trails

The are mainly three different types of trails in the region:

Bikepark in Les Saisies: The bike park has several lifts and some great descents in varying difficulty levels. There is even a jump trail with some larger gaps, step-ups and step-downs. 

Shorter descents in the valley: There are some great descents from Les Saisies (la Croix de la Coste) to the Beaufort valley. Additionally, we would also recommend the runs from Col du Pré to Beaufort. They are all between 700 and 1100 meters of descent. With Up’N Down Shuttle you can cover most of them in one day (highly recommended).

Long descents to the valley floor (Albertville): There are two great long routes all the way down to Albertville: La Dev’Albertville and La Toutafond. They are both epic, long descents and take several hours. 

For the latter two, you can either pedal yourself (not recommended as most uphills are shared with cars on busy roads), use the public bus with bike trailer (see below), private shuttles (see below) and cable cars. If you use the public bus, make sure to check the schedule and arrive early to get a spot on the bus. The cable cars outside of the bike park only run on certain days of the week which makes it harder to plan your tours. Especially it is hard to understand why certain lifts do not run on weekends.