In a group of six going skiing, there is often one who does not ski: a grandparent, a knee, a child too small, someone who does not like it. For them, the resort is judged on something other than kilometres of pistes. Our resort pages list, resort by resort, the named non-ski activities — not “varied activities”, but the sledge run, the ice rink, the thermal centre, with their commune and distance. Here is what they bring out.
Snowshoeing and walking: everywhere, but not alike
Almost all resorts mark snowshoe trails. The difference is in the length and the view. The plateaux — Les Saisies in the Beaufortain, the Vercors at Autrans and Villard-de-Lans, the Capcir at Font-Romeu — offer kilometres of groomed paths, flat or nearly, without taking a lift. The steep valleys — Chamonix, the upper Tarentaise — require going up by gondola with a pedestrian pass to find the same terrain.
Cross-country skiing is the gliding version of the same idea. Our pages list the named, measured trails: Mouthe, in the Jura, lines up 246 km of distinct track; Les Rousses 132; Métabief 84. In the Alps, Les Saisies, Autrans and Bessans are the big areas.
Sledging: a facility apart
A secured sledge run — marked, groomed, separated from skiers, sometimes with its own lift — exists in only a minority of resorts. Where it does, it is often the children’s favourite activity of the week. Our pages show it when it is mapped.
The big resorts have added rail sledges, open summer and winter: Les Saisies, La Plagne, Les Arcs, Avoriaz. A run costs the price of a coffee; it is the kind of activity that fills a bad-weather afternoon.
Water: pools, ice rinks, thermal baths
Three different things that brochures blur together.
The ice rink is the most common facility: most resorts with more than 100 km of pistes have one, often outdoors.
The pool or aqua centre has become the purpose-built resorts’ argument: Aquamotion at Courchevel, Aquariaz at Avoriaz, the aqua centre at Val Thorens. These are leisure pools — slides, heated outdoor basins — and cost between €10 and €25 a visit.
Thermal baths are something else: cure establishments, in spa villages that were spas before they were ski resorts. Cauterets, Ax-les-Thermes, Le Mont-Dore, Brides-les-Bains, Saint-Gervais. You go for the balneotherapy, not the slide, and après-ski has a different face there.
The mountain towns
And then there are the resorts that are first of all towns: Chamonix, Megève, Briançon below Serre Chevalier, Barcelonnette below Pra-Loup. You spend a week there without clicking in — museums, markets, cinemas, real life out of season — and that is precisely what the purpose-built high-altitude resorts cannot offer. Chamonix, with its trains, its alpine museum and the Aiguille du Midi, tops our ranking.
What the ranking measures
The table below ranks resorts by number of non-ski activities listed nearby, all categories combined. It favours towns and big resorts, and rightly so: that is where there is most to do. To choose, look rather at the resort’s page and its list by category: what counts is that the activity your group is missing is there.
