Christmas & New Year Highlights from Les 2 Alpes 2016/17
With a busy festive fortnight coming to an end, we bring you a rundown of the highlights of the last two weeks.
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Read reviews of the best Les 2 Alpes events
With a busy festive fortnight coming to an end, we bring you a rundown of the highlights of the last two weeks.
Dom Harington is a Halfpipe Snowboarder from Leeds who has missed the last two Olympics due to injuries after winning the Europa Cup Halfpipe. Sochi is probably his last chance to be part of the Olympics and he's giving it everything he has.
The Les Deux Alpes Défi Vertical, or Vertical Challenge is a new event this year for those who like to ski uphill.
For the nineteenth edition the competitors were greeted by three days of good weather and perfect biking conditions. The fastest riders hit speeds well over 100km/h and covered the twenty-five-kilometre-long course in just under thirty minutes.
Meet Aimee Fuller Slopestyle Snowboarder, stunt double and one of the British Freestyle Snowboard Team.
Saturday saw the first edition of the Les Deux Alpes Defí Vertical – a ski touring race from the town at 1650 metres to the top of the glacier at 3600 metres.
Stage 17 of the Tour de France 2016 took the riders from Bern, the capital of Switzerland, to Finaut-Emosson on the Swiss-French border, just around the corner from Chamonix-Mont-Blanc.
Murray Buchan a skier who grew up on the finger-snapping plastic of Edinburgh's Hillend made a choice to ski rather than play rugby and hopefully that choice will take hi to an Olympic medal.
Craig David is undoubtedly the best-known singer Les Deux Alpes has seen perform but the festival saw plenty more great music. This was also the snowiest Rise Festival so far, keeping the skiers and snowboarders happy and helping along the party atmosphere.
As always there is a full programme of events running from the start to the end of the season. Many of these will be familiar to regular visitors, and you might even have planned your holiday around one of them.
This weekend just gone saw the fifth edition of the Deux Alpes Night Snowtrail race. As always it was a well-attended, well-run event, but this year saw the 2015 Trail Running world champion in attendance. Sylvain Court, who is also a two-time French champion, was running in the 20km race.
Details have just been announced for two events this summer – one familiar and one brand new. The 2 Alpes Outdoor Festival on 24th-25th June will be followed by the eighteenth edition of the Mountain of Hell mountain bike race the weekend after
Saturday afternoon saw the arrival of around 3000 Rise festival-goers in Les Deux Alpes, and it didn’t take long for the party to get underway. Back for the third year running, this time around looks set to be bigger than ever.
On Wednesday, Les Deux Alpes attempted to beat the world record for the largest ever torchlit descent on skis. Thousands of torches were ready, the people from Guinness were there to officiate and count, and a large crowd was gathered on La Toura ready for the ski down in the dark.
Katie Summerhayes from Sheffield is back on snow for the first time since her ACL injury. She talks about the freeski scene to come out of Sheffield Ski Village and how Woodsy helped to push her when she started out on the European circuit.
December is when the lifts are opening and the Christmas holidays are on the horizon.
Spring is in the air, as we enjoy longer sunny days. Don't forget your sunscreen!
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.