Tignes
Mountain stats
Lift count :
1 x Cable-cars
2 x Gondolas
24 x Chairlifts
19 x Drag-lifts
1 funicular
93miles (150km) of pistes
Pass (Low/High Season) : £26.98-27.80 Day, £134.90 Week
Tignes is very snowboard friendly; long before the other French resorts welcomed snowboarders, Tignes opened it’s arms wide and said, 'come here and slide down that, jump over that, and listen to this while you're at it'. If Carlsberg made snowboard resorts they would have made Tignes.
Set at 2100 meters and part of the 290km of pistes that is the Espace Killy, it has a very good snow record, a glacier, a lake and a lot of varying terrain; Tignes can almost guarantee everyone leaves satisfied. You drive up to the resort on the same road towards Val D’Isere from Bourg Saint Maurice, accessible by Eurostar and the snow train. A painting of Hercules holding back the water greets you as you cross over the high dam, and as you pass a church on your right you can see Jesus, who has freed his arms from the crucifix and now points towards the old submerged village. Eerie, man, eerie.
Tignes is one of the major resorts in France, and has long been hosting national and international events, their web site even has a Japanese translation. BASI runs some of its snowboard instructors courses here. Snowboard teams and manufacturers also use Tignes to host training camps and events.
The main lifts open early September and close late May and with summer boarding on the Grande Motte Glacier from mid June to September. You can almost board every day of the year. This year they even had a summer funpark.
And if you're up for it, you can dive under the ice of Tignes-Le-Lac and look up at the ice-distorted mountains.