Paradiski is what happens when you take two already enormous French ski areas and wire them together. By linking La Plagne, Les Arcs, and Peisey-Vallandry, the operators created a 425-kilometre network that simply swallows crowds. Because 70% of the terrain sits above 2,000 metres, it holds snow well into late spring. You get the sheltered tree runs of Peisey-Vallandry, the wide-open bowls of La Plagne, and the steep glacier pitches of Les Arcs, all on the same lift pass. The whole system hinges on the Vanoise Express, a double-decker cable car that fires skiers across the valley in four minutes. If your main goal on a ski trip is to cover as much ground as physically possible without skiing the same piste twice, this is where you go.
How the valleys link
Geographically, Paradiski consists of two massive mountain plateaus split by the deep Ponthurin valley. To the east, the Les Arcs and Peisey-Vallandry network drops steeply from the Aiguille Rouge. To the west, La Plagne spreads out as a sprawling, interconnected bowl of purpose-built villages. Before 2003, you had to choose one or the other. Linking them seemed impossible without dragging a lift line down to the valley floor and back up again.
The Vanoise Express solved the problem by simply ignoring the valley floor. The cable car spans 1.8 kilometres straight across the gap without a single support pylon, running 380 metres in the air. It leaves Plan Peisey on the Les Arcs side and docks at Les Coches in La Plagne four minutes later. Each cabin holds 188 people, moving 4,000 skiers an hour. It is fast enough that you can genuinely base yourself in La Plagne, spend the entire afternoon skiing Les Arcs, and still make it back before the lifts close. The glass-bottomed floor panels also give you a clear view straight down into the trees, which is either brilliant or terrifying depending on your head for heights.
Terrain, lifts & piste mix
The piste map lists 264 marked runs: 12 green, 137 blue, 79 red, and 36 black. That heavy bias towards blues and reds tells you exactly what Paradiski is built for. It is an intermediate cruiser’s dream. La Plagne is famous for its wide, rolling motorways where you can open up your turns, while Les Arcs tends to offer more direct, steeper fall-lines.
Moving around the domain relies on a network of 130 lifts. Both main resorts have spent the last decade tearing out their old, slow chairlifts and replacing them with high-speed six- and eight-seater bubbles. Bottlenecks still happen at the main base stations during the morning ski school rush, but once you get up high, the crowds disperse quickly. Novices also get dedicated ‘Ski Tranquille’ zones, which are roped off from the main traffic so beginners do not have to deal with fast skiers flying past them.
If you want to ski off-piste, the lift-accessed freeride terrain is serious. The north face of the Bellecôte glacier in La Plagne and the steep couloirs off the Aiguille Rouge in Les Arcs are notoriously challenging. You need a local guide for these routes; the glacier is heavily crevassed, and the couloirs are avalanche-prone. For freestyle riders, the domain maintains three snowparks, three boardercross tracks, and several halfpipes.
One pass, one domain
You can buy a local pass for just La Plagne or just Les Arcs, but the full Paradiski pass is the only way to ride the Vanoise Express and ski both sides. It covers all 425 kilometres of pistes and gives you access to the Bellecôte and Aiguille Rouge glaciers, both of which top out over 3,000 metres.
The pass also covers the 153 kilometres of cross-country trails down in the forests, mostly around the Nancroix valley in Peisey-Vallandry. Realistically, the full domain pass only makes sense if you actually plan to cover ground. If you are a beginner or skiing with young children, a local pass is usually plenty for the first few days. The lift company’s Yuge app is genuinely useful here – it tracks your route, logs your vertical drop, and gives live updates on lift queues so you can avoid the busiest sectors.
Resorts in the domain
Paradiski is made up of 20 distinct villages. They range from 1960s concrete blocks built above the treeline to old farming hamlets lower down the mountain.
La Plagne
La Plagne is a collection of 11 villages. The high-altitude bases like Plagne Centre, Plagne Aime 2000, and Plagne Bellecôte are purpose-built for ski-in/ski-out convenience rather than alpine charm. Aime 2000 is essentially a massive cruise ship on snow, housing apartments and shops in one giant block. Further down the mountain, villages like Montchavin, Les Coches, and Champagny-en-Vanoise sit in the trees and look much more like traditional Savoyard resorts.
Les Arcs
Les Arcs splits into four main altitude bases: Arc 1600, Arc 1800, Arc 1950, and Arc 2000. The original 1600 and 1800 villages feature modernist architecture designed by Charlotte Perriand to follow the contours of the hill. Arc 1950 is completely different – it was built later by Intrawest as a pedestrianised, North American-style village with high-end apartments. Arc 2000 sits in a stark, high-altitude bowl right beneath the Aiguille Rouge, giving you the fastest access to the steepest skiing.
Peisey-Vallandry
Peisey-Vallandry sits right in the middle of the domain. It is quieter than the two main resorts and consists of traditional villages like Plan Peisey and Vallandry. The tree-lined skiing here is brilliant when the weather closes in and you need visibility. Because the Vanoise Express departs from here, it is the most strategic place to stay if you want to ski the entire domain equally.
Planning a week on the mountain
With 425 kilometres to cover, you need a plan. Most people spend their first two days skiing their “home” side. If you stay in La Plagne, that means working your way through the central bowl, taking the gondola up to the Roche de Mio, and skiing the long red run down to Montchavin. The Mont de la Guerre piste down to Champagny is a local favourite because it takes you away from the main lift infrastructure entirely.
By day three, you cross the valley. A classic La Plagne itinerary is to take the Vanoise Express early, ride the Transarc gondola up Les Arcs, and head for the Aiguille Rouge. The run from the 3,226-metre peak down to Villaroger at 1,200 metres is one of the longest continuous descents in the Alps. It is a massive 2,000-metre vertical drop that will burn your legs out. After that, you slowly work your way back across the Les Arcs bowl to catch the cable car home.
If you are based in Les Arcs, the reverse applies: cross over to La Plagne to ski the rolling blues or push out to the Champagny edges. The only hard rule in Paradiski is to watch the time. If you miss the last Vanoise Express back to your side of the valley, you are looking at a very expensive, hour-long taxi ride around the mountain roads.
When to visit & snow reliability
Paradiski is a safe bet for snow. With two glaciers over 3,000 metres and the vast majority of the skiing above 2,000 metres, the season runs solidly from mid-December to late April. The lower runs down to Montchavin or Villaroger rely on a massive snowmaking system that covers 635 acres, so the home runs usually stay open even in lean years.
January is cold and delivers the best powder. When storms hit, the sheltered tree runs in Peisey-Vallandry are the only places you can actually see where you are going. February offers the best balance of good snow and longer days, but you have to navigate the French school holiday crowds. March brings warmer weather, meaning you need to ski the south-facing slopes early before they turn to slush. Late April is purely about spring skiing – hard pack in the morning, soft snow by lunch, and empty terraces in the afternoon.
Beyond skiing
You do not have to ski every day. La Plagne has the Olympic bobsleigh track from the 1992 Albertville Games. You can actually pay to ride down the ice chute in a raft or a professional bobsleigh, hitting speeds of 120 km/h. It is loud, rough, and genuinely terrifying.
If you prefer quiet, the Nancroix valley in Peisey-Vallandry is the place for cross-country skiing, snowshoeing, and dog sledding right on the edge of the Vanoise National Park. Both main resorts have also built massive aquatic centres. The Mille8 spa in Arc 1950 and the Deep Nature spa in La Plagne have outdoor heated pools looking straight at Mont Blanc. The resorts also run occasional stunts, like the “Paradiski Gravity” event where athletes walk a slackline suspended between the two Vanoise Express cable cars over the valley.
How the linked domain grew
La Plagne and Les Arcs were built in the 1960s under the French government’s “Snow Plan”, which aimed to create high-altitude, snow-sure resorts from scratch. For forty years, they operated as rivals. Linking them across the Ponthurin valley was an obvious idea, but building pylons across the valley floor would have wrecked the environment right next to the Vanoise National Park.
The solution arrived in 2003 with the Vanoise Express. Poma built the cable car for €15 million using a single-span design, meaning the cables stretch the entire 1.8 kilometres without any support towers in the middle. When it opened, it instantly merged two large resorts into one of the biggest ski domains on earth. It proved that you could build a mega-resort without necessarily bulldozing the valley floor to do it.
Who it suits best
Paradiski is built for intermediate skiers who want to cover distance. The sheer number of wide blue and red runs means you can cruise all week without getting bored. It also works perfectly for mixed-ability groups, because almost every steep pitch has an easier blue run winding around it.
Experts will find enough steep terrain off the Aiguille Rouge and Bellecôte to justify the trip, but skiers looking for the raw, extreme culture of Chamonix might find Paradiski a bit too polished. Likewise, if you want traditional alpine charm, the concrete blocks of Plagne Centre or Arc 2000 will disappoint you – though you can avoid that by staying in Montchavin or Peisey-Vallandry. Ultimately, Paradiski is a highly efficient, snow-sure machine designed to move thousands of people around a massive mountain safely.
Getting there
Chambéry Airport is the closest at approximately 115 km away, while Geneva Airport and Lyon-Saint Exupéry are both around 150 km to 200 km from the resorts. If you take the train, the valley has two major rail hubs: Bourg-Saint-Maurice connects directly to Les Arcs via a funicular, and Aime-la-Plagne serves the La Plagne villages.
Deadline: February 13th
Winner Announcement: February 14th
