Mountain Biking in Les 2 Alpes

The Riding in Les 2 Alpes

Trails are graded like a ski map: green, blue, red, black, and a step beyond into “elite” for the two competition tracks. Plan your week around the sectors and the vertical rather than ticking off single runs. Warm up on the Diable flow in the morning, take the lift chain to the glacier when your legs and nerve are ready, and ride the full snow-to-village line as the reward at the end of the day.

Beginner

Start in the village sectors, not on the glacier. The gentlest proper descent is L’Ange, a green that runs roughly 7km and loses around 730m on a flowing, forgiving line — long enough to build real confidence, never steep enough to scare you. There’s a second easy green over on the Vallée Blanche side (about 5km, –440m) for a change of scenery once L’Ange feels automatic. Down at the base, a learner area with a Viking carpet lift lets you and the kids drill braking and cornering before committing to a lift-served run. Lap the greens until the berms come without thinking, then graduate to a blue on the same lift chain rather than reaching for the glacier on day one.

Skip Altitude 3200 entirely until you’ve got a few solid days behind you. The glacier terrain is high, exposed and sometimes snow-covered, and the lines off the top are built for confident riders. Get your hands and your braking sorted in the forest first, where a mistake costs you a foot down rather than a slide on snow at altitude. The valley greens are also long enough to teach you the one skill that matters most here — managing your brakes over sustained descent. On a 700m-plus run your hands tire and your fingers cramp, and learning to feather rather than grab is what keeps a green fun instead of frightening. If you’re brand new, book a morning or two with a local school and spend the rest of each day lapping what you’ve drilled.

Intermediate

This is where Les 2 Alpes opens up. The Diable blue (around 5.3km, –730m) is the run you’ll lap most: a long, swooping descent through the middle of the mountain that rewards letting off the brakes and linking turns. Lilith matches it for length and vertical (about 4.5km, –730m) with a slightly busier, more playful character, and Pied Moutet (4.5km, –440m) gives you a mellower blue when you want distance without commitment. The Grand Nord (around 2km, –360m) is the short, sharp blue lap for sessioning when you don’t fancy a full descent.

When the blues stop holding your attention, step onto the reds. Sapins (2.5km, –500m) and Rocky Line (2km, –360m) are the natural progression — steeper, rockier, faster, but without elite-grade consequences. Belle Étoile (1.5km, –200m) is the short, steep red for sessioning a technical section without committing to a full descent. The big intermediate prize is La 666 (around 5km, –830m), a long red with XXL views over the Écrins that strings together everything you’ve drilled into one of the most satisfying descents in the resort. Ride the shorter reds first, then save 666 for when your forearms can take it. There’s also a Bike Patrollers trail (around 3km, –390m) if you want a graded line that flows rather than punishes, useful as a mid-week reset day when your hands need a rest from the rough stuff.

Advanced

The blacks and elite tracks are the reason hard riders come here. The Black Garden in the Vénosc sector is the technical benchmark: an elite-graded line covering roughly 1.8km for around –500m of steep, raw, root-and-rock downhill that rides nothing like the buffed flow above it. La Fury is the other elite track, around 2.5km for –700m, an intimidating competition line studded with large features that will hold the attention of anyone who’s raced. The Mountain of Hell trail itself (about 2km, –300m) sits on the menu as a black so you can ride the legend’s lower slopes outside race week.

Then there’s the full glacier line, and it’s worth understanding what makes it different. Most lift-served descents in the Alps stay in one zone — forest, or bike-park dirt. Here the top of the mountain is genuine high-alpine terrain, so the riding changes character three times in a single run. From Altitude 3200, when conditions allow, you drop Highway to Heaven across snow from 3,200m down toward 2,600m before the trail hands you over to rock, scree and forest for the rest of the descent to the village. This snow section is genuinely weather- and season-dependent — it can be closed for stretches of the summer — so check conditions before you plan a day around it, and don’t assume it will be running. Linking the glacier to the Vénosc gorge gives you the headline 2,000m-plus top-to-bottom run that defines the resort when it’s open. Earn it by sessioning the reds and the lower blacks first, then ride the whole thing when your legs and your line choice are both sharp.

eMTB

Les 2 Alpes is set up for e-bikes, with six waymarked e-MTB itineraries plus a long cross-country option (XC Veneon, around 22km, gaining and shedding a few hundred metres along the Vénéon valley) that links terrain a pedal rider would otherwise skip. An e-bike rewrites how you use the mountain. Instead of being chained to the lift schedule, you climb out toward Pied Moutet and the quiet valley singletrack under your own power, self-shuttle between sectors, and reach viewpoints and refuges that downhill riders never see. The lifts and bike park stay open to you for the big descents, but the e-bike turns the surrounding Oisans valleys — the Vénéon gorge, the climbs toward the Écrins — into a day’s adventure rather than a slog. Village shops stock current e-MTBs, so you don’t need to bring your own.