© Tom Humpage
© Tom Humpage
© Tom Humpage
© Tom Humpage
© Tom Humpage
About Mountain Biking Trails in La Plagne
Guide to best Biking Trails in the area
La Plagne is made up of a number of different villages; Champagny, Belle Plagne, Plagnes Villages, Plagne Soleil, Plagne Bellecote, Plagne Centre, Aime, La Roche, Les Coches, Montchavin, Montalbert and Longefoy, all of which interconnect with mountain bike trails of varying degrees of difficulty and duration.
La Plagne is also part of the Paradiski area which you can connect to via the Vanoise Express, a huge cable car that spans the valley into neighbouring Les Arcs on week days.
The centre of resort and the immediate surrounding area is made up of green trails, blue, red and blacks, with a further blue, red and a (huge) black trail over on the Champagny side.
If it's your first time mountain biking, or if you just want to get your biking legs back, then try out green trail Les Tuilles in Les Coches. You can pick it up from either the top of the Montchavin chairlift or the Plan Bois chairlift, and depending on which part of it you do there's between -420m and -645m of descent on easy to ride trails. You can loop round these two lifts quite happily doing different sections of the same trail.
From the top of the Roche de Mio lift is a nice long blue run called Leitchoums. It covers 12.5km and descends from 2,739m all the way to Plagne centre via Aime La Plagne and comprises of mostly fire road (4x4 track) There is around 170m of climbing to do on this trail, so it's more suitable for enduro or hard tail bikes. Or if you're up for a bit more of a technical challenge and a longer run, then the Les Esserts red trail takes you along 8km -683m from Plagne Montalbert back down to the Echo Bus pick up point at the bottom of the valley in Macot.
Over in Champagny more experienced riders can tackle the 26km black trail, which starts from the top of the Roche de Mio, and takes you down past Champagny le Haut, back up on the Champagny gondola and over the top back to your start point at the bottom of the Roche di Mio. The trail has +716m uphill and -2191m of descent incorporating spruce forest and wide open panoramas. Expect to complete this in about 2.5 hours.
There are free lifts at your disposal on the La Plagne side and in Les Coches, which aren't very long and don't give you a huge amount of access. We'd recommend you get hold of a local area pass if you just want to stay in La Plagne, or a Paradiski pass if you want to venture across into Les Arcs. Check out prices here.
Please also note that not all the lifts operate throughout the whole week. Take a look at the summer lift timetable for more information.
Also be aware that a lot of the trails used for mountain biking are also used by hikers, so watch your speed and be mindful of other people enjoying the mountain too.
