Vars Mountain Bike Guide: La Forêt Blanche & Vars Bike Park

High up in France's Hautes-Alpes, Vars stitches three lifts, 200km of waymarked trail and a 32km point-to-point descent into one of the southern Alps' most natural-feeling bike parks — short on hype, long on loam.

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

At the top of the Peyrol chairlift, the trail map pins a single point at 2,580 metres. That number — the altitude of La Mayt, the upper terminus of the Vars-Sainte-Marie lift system — is the practical centre of gravity of riding here. From it, riders can drop more than 1,500 vertical metres of natural singletrack toward the Durance valley without ever spinning back up, a profile that turns the Vars Bike Park from a typical lift-served playground into something closer to a high-Alpine enduro estate.

Vars sits inside La Forêt Blanche, the linked summer-and-winter domain it shares with neighbouring Risoul, on the eastern flank of the Hautes-Alpes. The forest is mostly larch — pale, open, and unusually generous with sightlines — which is what gives the trails their distinctive light-and-shadow feel and the region its name.

The signature descents

The trail every rider eventually queues for is Taillefer, a 2.5km red graded downhill named for French MTB pioneer Christian Taillefer. It is the oldest line on the hill and still the benchmark: fast, rooty forest sections cut by short, technical step-downs, all served by the Chabrières télémix from Vars-les-Claux. Sitting alongside it, the blue Rainbow Line (3.5km) and Crazy Marmot (2.3km) give intermediate riders a way to learn the same hill at half the speed.

Higher up, the network turns enduro. Elixir (red, 5.5km), Mystik Valley (red, 4.7km) and In the Sky (red, 3.9km) drop from the Sainte-Marie–Peyrol lift pair into long ribbons of natural loam. Expert riders aim for On the Rocks (black, 2km) for the rawest of the marked black-grade lines.

The headline ride, though, is the Vars–Embrun descent: roughly 32km of mostly natural trail dropping about 1,800 vertical metres from the high ridges down to the Durance. It is intermediate-friendly with breaks, but committing — there is no lift home, only a bus or shuttle back up.

The bike park structure

Three lifts open the mountain in summer. The Télémix de Chabrières serves the lower forest zone (Taillefer, Rainbow, the small slopestyle area). The Sainte-Marie chair, from the older Sainte-Marie village, feeds into the Peyrol chair, which finishes at La Mayt. The official network is published as more than 200km of itineraries: 9 cross-country routes from green Farmers Track to the 41km black All Around Vars, 7 marked downhill pistes, and 7 dedicated enduro routes including the green Caribou for first-timers.

Lift season

The bike-park lifts typically run from late June through late August, with day passes in recent seasons priced around €15 and week passes around €50. Outside that window, the trail network is still rideable on pedal-power — shoulder-season riding in early June and into September is some of the best conditions of the year, but riders must climb for their descents.

Getting there without a car

Vars is one of the few French alpine bike parks that is realistically reachable by train. The nearest SNCF station is Mont-Dauphin–Guillestre, served by overnight Intercités de Nuit from Paris-Austerlitz and TER connections via Marseille and Aix-en-Provence. From the station, the regional ZOU! bus runs three times daily to Vars-les-Claux in about 35 minutes for €2.10 booked online.

For air travellers, Turin, Grenoble and Nice are each roughly three hours by road. The train route is materially lower-impact and reflects the way an increasing number of Alpine bike-park visitors are choosing to travel.

Peak versus shoulder

July and the first half of August are peak: every lift open, every trail signed, busiest lift queues on weekends. Late June and the final week of August are the sweet spots — full lift operation, cooler forest temperatures, materially fewer riders. September is the connoisseur's window: lifts close, but the larch turns gold, the high enduro lines stay dry, and the long Vars–Embrun descent is at its quietest.

Storm cycles roll through the Hautes-Alpes fast; afternoon thunderstorms are normal in July. Riders chasing high-altitude lines such as Under the Crest are best served by an early start.

Where to base up

Vars is structured as four hamlets — Sainte-Marie, Saint-Marcellin, Les Claux and Le Vallon. Les Claux is the modern station: lifts, shops, bike rental, après. Sainte-Marie, lower down, has the older stone-built character and direct lift access via the Sainte-Marie chair. Lift-side accommodation gives the most riding hours per day; the surrounding Guillestre valley offers cheaper lodging and a short morning bus.

What Vars is, and isn't

Vars is not a manicured flow-park destination. It has no World Cup downhill round, no Crankworx stop, and the bike-park infrastructure is honest rather than industrial. What it offers instead is unusually natural singletrack across a vast vertical range, light traffic compared to Morzine or Les Gets, and a southern-Alps climate that keeps the dirt fast deeper into the season. For intermediate-to-expert riders who prefer earned descents over conveyor-belt laps, that combination is rare.

Full-length GoPro POV of the red-graded Taillefer trail, dropping from Chabrières through Vars's signature forest singletrack.