France 

                                  Spotlight On Les Deux Alpes

                                                                      (Originally written for OnTheSnow.com)
                                                                                         by Ted Heck

Long before the Doublemint chewing gum twins sang “Double your pleasure, double your fun” the burghers of two French villages, Mont-de-Lans and Venosc, in the province of Isere, decided to put their alpine pastures together to form a ski resort. Voila! Les 2 Alpes was born.

Unfortunately, the town fathers did not know about zoning and the purpose-built resort looks as if were assembled by someone who rummaged in wastebaskets of a dozen different architects.

But how does the saying go about X million Frenchmen can’t be wrong? Those Frenchmen flock to mile-high Les 2 Alpes, 35,000 at a time. They come to enjoy the extensive, mostly treeless ski terrain, efficient lifts, and lots of sun on south facing slopes.

This last attribute can turn sour in springtime, when the snow falls apart. But until then there is double fun here for everyone. More than 130 miles of prepared slopes, 10 percent of them black, 25 percent red and the rest blue and green. A top skiable elevation of nearly 12,000 feet and a vertical drop of more than 7,000 feet are impressive statistics rarely found in a ski area.

The terrain offers snowboarders a chance to strut their stuff. In addition to wide-open spaces, shredders have a boarder cross, fun park and halfpipe. Stout-at-heart skiers have a mile-long couloir into which to jump. The Mont-de-Lans glacier, near the top of the main mountain, is claimed by the tourist office to be the largest skiable glacier in Europe. It is also skiable in summer from mid-July to September.

Among the equipment for the interconnects are 52 lifts, including 22 draglifts, 23 chairlifts, three gondolas, three cable cars and a funicular. They can move 67,000 persons an hour.

A lot of kids are in that last number. This is a family-friendly resort, with many hotels but also a lot of housekeeping apartments. British skiers use some chalets for their popular catered programs. Kids can start ski lessons as soon as they graduate from the nursery. They have all sorts of other winter activities with which to toy.

On a whiteout day, the kind that plagues high alpine areas occasionally, skiers can ride a gondola down to the village of Venosc to see what things looked like back in the 14th century. But they need to get back by dark. With so many snowboarders and other young people, a lot goes on.

Lyons and Geneva are gateway airports; Grenoble is the closest big city, about an hour away.