Tignes-Val d’Isère’s 300km of varied terrain reaches from Tignes Les Brévières at one end of the ski area to the Pissaillas glacier above Val d’Isère at the other. It’s not essential to be an expert to ski or snowboard here, but to get the most out of it takes strong legs and the confidence to tackle dark blue runs and testing reds that sometimes seem to go on forever.
From the main accommodation centres, Val Claret and Tignes Le Lac (2km apart and jointly known as Tignes 2100), lifts travel up either side of the resort, in one direction towards Val d’Isère, and towards the 2,750m Aiguille Percée in the other. The latter is also the route to long runs down to the lower satellite villages of Tignes 1800 and Tignes Les Brévières.
Tignes’ pièce de résistance is the Grande Motte glacier, reached from Val Claret by the resort’s funicular lift and then the Grande Motte cable car, which has 100-person capacity cabins and a rooftop viewing platform (only open in summer), carrying up to 1,000 passengers per hour. The top cable car station at 3,456m is the starting point for some of the resort’s most spectacular descents, both on and off piste, and the highest slopes here are also open in the summer. By the middle of November it’s possible to tackle the thigh-burning 1,350m vertical red all the way back down to the funicular station in Val Claret – a greater drop than many North American resorts can offer in midwinter.
