LES DEUX ALPES  (LES 2 ALPES)

Resort Overview
One of the biggest and most important resorts in France’s Isère département, perched high on the edge of the wild and beautiful Parc National des Ecrins.

Introduction
The station is consistently at the vanguard of new-school snowsports and has one of the biggest snowparks in the Alps, plus innovative in-bounds freeride features marketed under the ‘Slide Zones’ banner. The ski area is most famous for having Europe’s largest skiable glacier; with high-altitude, snow-sure pistes which are just as busy in summer as they are in winter. The descent from the summit to the lowest piste-accessible point in the domain delivers an incredible on-piste vertical drop of 2220 m (7282 ft), one of the world’s greatest.

Character
Les Deux Alpes (now more commonly written as Les 2 Alpes) is a large and lively town, with over 2000 permanent inhabitants; a figure that swells 16-fold during the height of the winter season with the influx of snowsports visitors, making this one of France’s most animated resorts. It offers a wide choice of accommodation and a large and vibrant selection of bars, restaurants and shops; the resort may have an unpolished appearance, but it does have a discernible soul.

In the regional dialect, the word ‘alpe’ refers to a high meadow; Les Deux Alpes gets its name from the fact that it straddles both ends of the mountain pastures between the two nearby parish villages of Mont-de-Lans and Venosc, whose originally separate summer-only farm settlements have now merged into one large, year-round, international mountain-sports resort, strung out along these long and sun-drenched meadows high between the Romanche and Vénéon valleys.

Traditional Villages
The two local parish villages, in their respective valleys below either end of the long flat col containing Les Deux Alpes, have an authentic regional character which is still redolent of times gone by. Both are linked by ski lift with the main resort, accessible on foot by all visitors (Pedestrian Pass required for non-skiers).

Mont-de-Lans is the small hillside village which straddles the sole access road rising to Les Deux Alpes from the Romanche Valley. Reachable on-piste, it marks the gateway to Les Deux Alpes and the lowest altitude boundary of the ski area.

Venosc is a tranquil commune of nine hamlets, terraced together on the sheltered wooded slopes of the Vénéon valley; here, local craftworkers have developed a charming artisan’s village of handicraft boutiques amongst the steep cobbled paths