Exploring France's Secret Bike Parks - Intro

They do things a bit differently in France. With the skiing boom of the mid-Twentieth Century, it wasn’t just the big resorts who got in on the act. Lots of small towns and villages decided they wanted in on the goldrush.

Being France, more specifically the sparsely populated departments in the southern part of the Alps, ideas like profitability and business sense didn’t get much of a look in. Tiny mom and pop resorts sprang up in all kinds of weird and wonderful places. In much of the world, these lifts would have been torn down when they failed to turn a profit, maybe further north where competition for space is way fiercer they would have too, but that’s not how they do things here.


This has left a series of small, weird ski resorts dotted across the southern part of the Alps, and some of them open for bikes in the summer. It is a world where braking bumps don't exist, the lift crew have time to chat to you and you can't be quite sure what is waiting for you at the top of that first ride up. There were so many small, human moments that just wouldn't happen in a big bike park. Like the crew in Reallon letting us use their shower because after three weeks living in the woods, hot, running water was a real luxury or sheltering from a storm in the lift cabin at Chabanon.




While the bigger resorts try and turn themselves into pale imitations of Whistler, Morzine or Aspen, focused on trying to keep holidaymakers in the resort for their whole stay, these small spots tend to be shaped by whatever the people who work there happen to be into. It’s hardly fair to call some of these spots resorts, even.

I can’t help thinking about it like big wave surfing. You’re not going to the beach to look for everything you had ever hoped for, ready for all the family to keep you entertained for the whole holiday. Rather you’re looking for a feeling or a moment, something that puts a grin on your face. Then tomorrow it’s onto the next spot looking for the next moment.

Maybe this idea of big wave surfing wouldn’t work for a conventional trip. After all, if you have to book accommodation and so forth, there needs to be something good where you’re paying to stay. However, if you can forgo this idea and pack everything into a vehicle you can sleep in, you have a whole constellation of small bike parks to explore. If you find something good, great, if not, just pack everything up and head onto the next spot.

We chose our trusty Jeep Cherokee with a James Baroud roof tent and a Thule 2-bike rack for our road trip. It’s not the best vehicle for long-distance driving as it starts to feel more than a little sketchy when you get over 100km/h, but for cruising around the alps it is ideal. Having a 4x4 worked better for us as it opens up more possibilities for camping spots. Every night could get lost in the quiet of the forest with nothing but the deer, boar and birds for company.






It’s not always easy to find these bike parks. After all, if business sense is a rare commodity, it follows that marketing and communication would be even scarcer - you should definitely brush up on your French before trying this kind of trip. The French website, 26in.fr, had a great bike park map listing many of these oddities, although they haven’t updated it in a couple of years so maybe that site is not running anymore. Beyond that, it is often a case of studying the map to see where there are ski lifts then following it up with a visit to their website or Facebook page (if they have them). Failing that, you have to just show up and see.

We found everything from the fastest lift we’ve ridden any bike park to a near-deserted lift that the operator had to crank up each time we wanted to go for a lap. Some had found the money to have in professional trail crews to at least sketch out the design of the park, others seemed to make it up as they went.

In bigger resorts that can afford a trail crew the individual contributions of each builder tend to be consumed by the overall. One voice amongst many. In these small stations, it is usually a single person looking after the trails, so you get a feel for their vision of riding. You can get into some of the deeper philosophical questions of our sport, like: is it the person who shaped the initial trail that gives it its character, or is it the person there week-in, week-out, shaping the edges and the lips that defines it?




For this series we featured three of our favourite stops: Vars, Abries and Reallon. If we had more time it would have been great to shoot stories at Montclar, Chabanon and Le Sauze. and there so many other bike parks to explore in the region - at a rough count, there are maybe 20 bikeparks of differing sizes and styles between Briançon and Nice, and that is before you cross the border into Italy...