Activity Reviews in Les 2 Alpes

The wall to wall sunshine continues here in the Oisans, which is very welcome after a week's UK holiday in what appeared to be a howling north wind (and probably wasn't, but it definitely felt like being forcibly fast forwarded by about a month and a half). To be fair it only chucked rain for one day out of seven, and we did see a reasonable amount of sun as well, but not the warm cuddly sort you get here - more a kind of SunShine-Lite diet version with the best bits taken out and replaced with some sort of chemical imitation.

Having gone for the easiest of peasy via ferrata routes last week, this time we opted for scaring ourselves to death on something which at first glance looks like a sheer unscalable cliff. And probably would indeed be a sheer unscalable cliff had someone not nailed a load of bars and cables to it.

The Mountain of Hell MTB race is now in its 17th year and the 2016 edition saw 700 mountain bikers take part from no less than 18 different countries. For the first time this year there was a children's race with 23 competitors taking part, and 16 women also joined the ranks - I was one of them.

Les Deux Alpes is one of the Alps most bustling summer resorts. It’s home to Europe’s largest glacier which hosts training pistes for national teams all around the world, it has hundreds of kilometres of walking and mountain biking trails and a huge range of summer activities including volleyball, tennis, a luge, a swimming pool, archery, golf, mini golf and an avalanche simulator!

Les 2 Alpes in summer is a veritable hot bed of things to do. I'm here for a few days trying out some of the things you can do on your summer visit here, and today it was the turn of the Via Ferrata.

Do something a little different and ride the Vallée Blanche sector on the other side of Les 2 Alpes. Lot’s of people never ski this area which usually means it’s nice and quiet over there.

Les Deux Alpes’ ice rink is bang in the middle of the resort, between the main square and the foot of the pistes, so there is no excuse not to have a go while you are here.

Skiing La Grave is something that every serious skier should do at least once in their lives. 

On a blisteringly hot day, or even when it's raining, heading down the river in the Veneon Valley below Les 2 Alpes is a great way to spend a few hours, or most of the day depending on your plans.

This weekend saw Les Deux Alpes taken over by cyclists, with not only the Granfondo Les Deux Alpes but also the Belgian organised Climbing for Life event taking place in the resort.