Exploring France's Secret Bike parks - Reallon

Reallon tends to be overshadowed by its noisy neighbour, Les Orres. Sitting on opposite sides of the Lac de Serre Ponçon, the two resorts couldn't be more different. In this part of the world, Les Orres is the 400lb gorilla in the room, the biggest and flashiest resort in the region, especially when we start to talk about mountain biking.

Les Orres has hosted an EWS, is vying to host a World Cup DH, it has all the attractions, all the activities and all the money. In comparison Reallon is a small resort, a huddle of triangular buildings on the face of the mountain that wasn't open when we first came to ride because it was Tuesday. You might be able to guess which one we liked more…






What Reallon has that nobody else can touch is geography, or maybe geology is more accurate? As you ride the lower lifts up you see gentle sloping meadows stretching back down the resort, green and blue trails criss-cross the grass. As you crest the summit for the first lift station you see the first hint of the show-stopper for Reallon - Les Aiguilles.

As you ride the second lift and pass the little cliff about halfway up, Les Aiguilles really come into view. A crest of rock fingers reaching towards the heavens, the kind of place where scale and distance get screwed up and thrown out the window. They may look close, but to watch the hikers teeming like ants towards the rocky col to cross through, you realise that they are way further out than it first appears.






Describing them as mini-Dolomites felt like hyperbole, until Philipe, one of the lifties who spends his spare time as a wildlife photographer, explained that they are in fact geologically very similar to the Dolomites. His passion for wildlife isn’t surprising here, Les Aiguilles is teeming with birds, from griffin vultures and eagles circling overhead to songbirds flitting between the rocks and the national park beyond is home to wolves, chamois and much more.

Alighting from the upper lift, you see Reallon’s second party piece - the view down. It turns out that the other side of the mountain is more or less a sheer face down to Lac de Serre Ponçon. From this height, a vivid, blue expanse like the drawing from an anime film.

With geology like that, it is no surprise that Reallon is popular with hikers. For the lazy, you simply grab two lifts up to experience one of the most unique spots in the southern Alps. For the more dedicated there are incredible backcountry loops that merge with the Ecrins national park. Regardless of how much effort they want to expend, what is incontestable is how many of them flock here.






Reallon is committed to co-existence for hikers and bikers though. Nowhere is it more evident than on the top crest - hikers get a crestline trail with benches and information points, riders are a few metres below on a high-speed blast down from the chairlift. In high season that can mean a bit of a wait for a chair, but it is heartening to see that despite a solid customer base, they are still excited to try and attract mountain bikers.

The bike park itself is split neatly in two, in a very clever use of the terrain. From the lower lift you have the green and blue trails heading back down to base. On the upper lift you have the gnarlier red and black trails amongst the fields of rock that litter the upper slopes. That means less experienced riders are less likely to stray onto harder lines that may be out of their comfort zone.






There are just three bike parks trails up at the top, but you can easily jump onto some of the web of enduro trails, if you are happy to climb a bit. All three trails start from the same blast down to the crestline trail, although for 2021 they added an easier line down too.

While the red trails tend to stay out on the piste creating some stunning shapes in the grass, the black trail looks like a slightly bigger version of the same thing, until you get down to the ski piste. Suddenly the nice, wide trail becomes goat path through sharp, white rocks in the grass waiting to throw you off line or tear off a derailleur. It is a shocking change of riding style, but it put a grin on our faces every single time.

Michel the shapeur for Reallon was born just down the valley and works as ski patrol for the resort in winter. He is open about not having known much about mountain biking before he started doing this job, but it is clear that he has come to love the sport. Management doesn’t give him too much to work on the trails, he has to man the lifts too, but each morning he gets in a couple of hours, then again before he heads home. Yet he packs a lot into that time. With the amount of loose rock here, it is hard to stay on top of the trails, but somehow he manages it.






Talking to him about the trails, it is the constant learning that has him hooked. He rides a mountain bike now but knows he is not a great rider, but enjoys talking to riders about the trails to try and figure out how he can make them better. That dedication is paying off, for our final day in Reallon this year he had reshaped some of the sections from earlier in the summer and you could feel that he is really starting to understand how to make a trail flow and ride well.

If I am honest, when we first rode here in 2020 I was not convinced, I struggled to find a rhythm or pace in the constantly-moving rock. Yet coming back a year later I could not tell you quite what had changed, although Michel probably could, but Reallon put one of the biggest grins on our faces of the whole summer.


REALLON Bike Park mountain biking trails