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For this years annual road trip to the Alps the destination will be 3 valleys. Historically the destination has been determined by where I wanted to ride - this year however in the interest of fairness it is driven by where my girlfriend wants to hike. All well and good. I have only ever visited the 3 valleys in the winter so I have little to go on to start organising the trip. If anyone has been before I would be interested to know about nice campsites for tenting (preferably quiet, high up with good lift access) and also where would be a good base to explore the best riding? I like a bit of bike park but prefer to get off the beaten track. Obviously like to use the lifts but not scared of a good peddle or hike a bike. We will be going early August so info on lift opening dates also greatly received....basically any recommendations you have on the area...cheers!!!
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Nobody...?
I've only ridden in Meribel but it was one of the best trails I've ever had the pleasure of descending!
I can't offer you any specific advice but a good place to start for lift info is the individual resort web pages:
https://www.merinet.com/lifts/summer-dates
http://www.courchevel.com/ete/fr/structures-sites-vtt-e451.html (looks like free lifts!)
If you have a car I can highly recommend the riding in Champagny just around the corner - it's quite straightforward to do laps off the one or two lifts and the trails are great:
https://summer.champagny.com/activities-en/mountain-bikes-cyclotourism/mountain-bikes.html
In terms of campsites, I have to say you don't tend to see many of them up high, if any - they tend to be lower down in the valley.
Le Praz is a nice little village and not as resort like as the rest of the bits of Courcheval. Have a look at La Tania too - two quick lifts and you can be dropping in to Meribel. If you miss the last lift back it's a bit of a trek round on the road though.
Don't know much about the trails only ever skied there.
St Jean de Maurienne.
so many fantastic road climbs available from there and a decent sized town to cater for all.
Campsite also available at Camping Le Marintan in St Michel de Maurienne a few miles further south on the A43. The Col de Telegraphe actually starts at the cross roads on the high street and you follow that to get to the Galibier.
St Jean yesterday
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We went last year. We camped in Brides les Baines and caught the free bus up to meribel each day. It leaves every 2 hrs from 9am if you want the one with the bike trailer. Being lazy we caught the 11 am one. This was partly because its not hard to land up at the top of the valley when the lifts close and still have a 10km+ descent back to end the day on
The trails were great especially the 2 long red enduro trails 4 and 7 on the 2 ridge lines.
You do need to take care with the lifts though. Whoever plans their opening times needs shooting. In the Meribel valley the lifts are open every day. In courcheval and Val Thorens they are only open on certain days. To make matters worse not all the lifts in VT or Courcehval are open on the same day!!! I have no idea why. So one day we rode down from meribel to VT. Great, but the lifts in the rest of the valley were shut except 2 back to meribel. All the ones that allow you to explore the VT valley are only open on days when the link to meribel is shut. So frustrating.
Having said that we did have a great week and being able to ride from the ridges above meribel all the way back to Brides Les Baines was superb.