Les Gets MTB Guide: Bike Park, Trails & Lifts in Haute-Savoie

Inside the Haute-Savoie resort that hosted the 2022 UCI World Championships and 2023 World Cup: 128 kilometres of marked trails, three lifts and a Mont Chery line steep enough to humble most weekend racers.

By the IMPT Travel desk · Published 2026-05-30

The Mont Chery gondola climbs roughly 350 vertical metres out of the village, and when the cabin doors open at the top, the World Cup downhill track drops straight off the ridge into a corridor of pine roots, slick limestone and off-camber loam. That track is not on the public trail map and only opens for race weekends, but it is the line that most riders come to Les Gets to look at. The reassuring news is that nearly everything else on the mountain is built to be ridden by humans rather than world champions.

Les Gets sits at 1,172 metres in Haute-Savoie, twenty kilometres south of Lake Geneva and a single chairlift away from Morzine. It is one of the twelve resorts that make up the Portes du Soleil, the cross-border lift network that links France and Switzerland into what is arguably Europe's most coherent summer bike circuit. The local bike park alone advertises around 128 kilometres of marked trails fed by three lifts.

The signature trails

The Chavannes side is where most weeks begin. Le Roue Libre, a 2.7-kilometre red, threads doubles, hips and long bermed corners through the spruce and is the trail riders quote when they talk about Les Gets flow. The blue Tomawak covers similar ground at a gentler 1.6 kilometres with rollable tables and wide berms, making it the standard first lap for groups with mixed ability or first-time park visitors.

For something rougher, Le Canyon drops off the Chavannes ridge as a natural-style black, all roots, narrow rock chutes and steep root steps with very little manufactured shaping. It is the antidote to the smoother machine-built reds and tends to be where local riders disappear when the park fills up.

Mont Chery, on the opposite side of the valley, is the quieter and steeper half of the resort. Two black descents drop off the gondola, both with jumps and gaps that bite if approached without commitment. Riders comfortable with steep, rooty terrain rate it the more interesting half of the lift system; beginners are better served sticking to Chavannes and Nauchets.

How the lift system works

Three lifts shape the riding day. The Chavannes Express chairlift is the workhorse and the main pulse of the park. The Nauchets Express chairlift extends the network east and is also the lift used to spin laps back from neighbouring Morzine and Le Pleney. The Mont Chery gondola covers the steeper south-facing slopes across the village.

In high season, broadly early July through the end of August, lifts run from 09:00 to 17:30. Shoulder-season hours shift slightly later in the morning and close around 17:00. A single Les Gets lift pass covers the local park; a Portes du Soleil multi-pass unlocks the wider cross-border network and is worth the upgrade for any stay beyond two days.

Season window and conditions

The bike park runs a series of pre-opening weekends in late May and early June, then opens continuously from mid-June through mid-September. The Mont Chery gondola operates on a shorter calendar and tends to close at the end of August, so any trip planned specifically to ride the World Cup side of the valley should fall inside that window.

July and August deliver the most reliable weather but also the largest crowds, particularly around the bigger event weekends. Early September is the connoisseur's choice: cooler air, fewer riders, generally tackier dirt and lift queues that empty out after the school holidays. June can be excellent but is more weather-dependent, and storms still strip topsoil off the steeper black lines.

World Cup pedigree

Les Gets hosted the UCI Mountain Bike World Championships in 2022 and a multi-discipline UCI World Cup round in September 2023, with downhill, cross-country and short-track racing on the same hillside. The resort has continued to host UCI World Cup rounds in subsequent seasons, with the 2025 round scheduled for late August. For visiting riders this matters in two ways: the race weekends are worth planning around or avoiding, and the investment that has followed the event has visibly raised the quality of trail maintenance and signage across both sides of the valley.

Getting there without flying

Geneva is the obvious gateway and sits roughly 55 kilometres away, around 75 minutes by road. The lower-carbon route is the Léman Express rail service from Geneva to Cluses, the nearest mainline station, around 22 kilometres from the resort. From Cluses, the Y92 regional bus runs up the valley to Les Gets, and taxi transfers cover the final stretch in about 25 minutes. From Paris, TGV services connect through to Cluses in roughly four and a half hours. Travelling by rail rather than flying is the meaningful lever available to most visitors who care about the carbon side of the trip.

Where to base the week

Les Gets village itself is compact, walkable from most accommodation to the Chavannes lift, and noticeably more family-oriented than Morzine next door. Morzine offers more nightlife and a wider chalet inventory; Les Gets offers quieter evenings, easier logistics with kids and a shorter pedal to first lift. Both sit on the same lift network, so the choice is one of atmosphere rather than access.

Jackson Goldstone's helmet-cam run down the Mont Chery World Cup track gives a clear sense of how steep and rooted the race line really is.