Vars

Vars is a Southern French Alps resort in the Hautes-Alpes | Known for: 185 kilometres in La Forêt Blanche, four freestyle zones, Chabrières speed skiing and a 2750-metre high point | Season: December 5 2026 to April 11 2027 | Best for: park progression, spring filming, long all-mountain laps and high-speed skiing culture

Chabrières Reaches 2750 Metres Above Vars Les Claux

Chabrières rises to 2750 metres above Vars Les Claux, placing the top of La Forêt Blanche roughly 1100 vertical metres above the resort's main 1650-metre base. The linked Vars-Risoul domain currently advertises 185 kilometres of pistes and 36 lifts, giving the Southern Alps resort enough scale for full-day circuits rather than only park repetition. Larch forest defines much of the lower mountain, while upper sectors around Chabrières, La Mayt and the Col des Saluces open into broader terrain where wind, visibility and snow texture become more exposed.

The mountain does not operate as one uniform face. Vars Les Claux provides the principal resort base and fastest access toward the central ski network, Sainte-Marie creates another lift gateway lower in the valley, and higher chairs distribute riders toward Chabrières, Peyrol, Crévoux and La Mayt. From La Mayt at 2567 metres, the resort advertises more than 1000 metres of continuous descent toward Sainte-Marie. That vertical, combined with the Risoul connection, lets riders switch between groomed mileage, freestyle sessions and natural terrain without treating the snowpark as a separate satellite facility.

Eyssina Anchors Four Freestyle Zones

Vars Park is one of the resort's defining assets. The current official setup is organised around four freestyle spaces and a wider network of progression features that includes the Park de l'Eyssina, initiation terrain, Big Air, Kid Park and Totem Park. The shaping philosophy mixes slopestyle jumps with rails, boxes and jib features rather than designing every line around one competition format. That makes the area usable by first-time park skiers and experienced riders during the same operating period.

Eyssina carries the strongest advanced identity. Its terrain supports larger airtime and technical lines, while beginner-oriented zones reduce feature dimensions for skiers learning takeoffs, straight airs and first rail approaches. Totem Park introduces themed obstacles, and the Kid Park gives younger riders a direct route into freestyle without forcing them onto expert features. This progression ladder matters because Vars has long attracted riders who use the resort repeatedly rather than visiting only for one event.

Boardercross adds another layer to the freestyle map. Current resort material identifies routes at Pré Moré, Vallon, Eyssina and Les Heureux, with lengths ranging from a few hundred metres to approximately 1.5 kilometres. Banked turns, rollers and snow-built features train line choice and speed management differently from rails or jumps. A skier can therefore spend a day moving between slopestyle rhythm, jib technique and boardercross without leaving the same mountain.

Dirty South Turned Spring Vars Into A Film Location

The modern freeski connection is not limited to resort marketing. Antony Fait has a documented history of park and street filming tied directly to Vars, including Park Tape 2018 and later Dirty South Media projects. His profile connects the resort with a crew-driven style of skiing where rails, spring snow, cameras and repeated local sessions matter more than federation rankings. The mountain becomes a working film location rather than simply a place to train contest tricks.

Maël Collado carries that connection into a newer generation. His public archive identifies Vars as his home terrain and repeatedly returns to the resort after street filming trips. Last Round, filmed on April 11 2025, used empty slopes, soft spring snow and late light for a one-day crew session after a winter spent in urban terrain. That contrast between hard street projects and loose spring park skiing is central to the local video culture.

Cylian Cotto sits inside the same Dirty South network, alongside Robin Romera, Colas Attia and other French riders and filmers. Vars therefore has a contemporary freeski identity built not only through large shaped features but through people who return year after year, film each other and publish the resulting skiing. That grassroots layer gives the park a different cultural value from a resort that installs rails without developing a persistent rider scene.

Chabrières Drops 435 Metres For The Fastest Skiers

The Chabrières speed-skiing piste is the most extreme piece of engineered terrain on the mountain. The start sits at 2720 metres and the finish at 2285 metres, producing 435 metres of vertical over a 1400-metre course. The maximum gradient reaches 98 percent, with an average gradient of 52.5 percent. Elite speed skiers can pass 200 kilometres per hour in less than six seconds from a full high start.

Simon Billy set the men's world record here at 255.50 kilometres per hour in 2023. The 2026 season reinforced the piste's global role: the Speed Masters, World Championships and World Cup finals returned to Chabrières, and Italian Valentina Greggio raised the women's world record to 248.27 kilometres per hour on April 3 2026. Full-start runs remain rare because conditions must be exceptionally stable, and the 2026 edition produced only the third summit start in a decade.

Speed skiing is not freestyle, but Chabrières changes the technical atmosphere of Vars. The resort has a public culture around acceleration, surface preparation, aerodynamics and precise snow management that sits beside park shaping. Both disciplines depend on controlled speed and repeatable terrain construction, even though one aims for tricks and the other for maximum velocity.

La Forêt Blanche Connects Vars With Risoul

Vars and Risoul form La Forêt Blanche, one of the largest linked ski domains in the Southern Alps. The current 185-kilometre figure stretches across terrain reaching 2750 metres, with larch forests covering many lower sectors. The connection gives park-focused visitors room to leave Vars for longer mileage instead of spending an entire holiday under the same freestyle lifts. Risoul also brings its own recreational zones and a different mountain orientation, making the link useful when snow or weather differs across the domain.

The 2026-2027 winter calendar is straightforward: Vars plans continuous operation from December 5 2026 through April 11 2027. Risoul publishes the same overall dates, with a reduced-domain pre-opening from December 5 to 11 before full opening from December 12 when conditions permit. The shared calendar matters for riders planning domain crossings because a nominal Vars opening does not automatically mean every connection is operating at full capacity from the first morning.

For park skiers, January through March normally provides the most complete overlap between mature feature construction and full-domain operation. April changes the rhythm. Snow softens earlier, the park becomes more forgiving at certain times of day, and film crews gain the slush conditions that appear repeatedly in Vars edits. Feature speed must still be checked constantly because spring temperature changes can alter a jump line significantly between morning and afternoon.

Southern Alps Sun Meets High Mountain Wind

Vars sits in the Hautes-Alpes, where dry spells, strong sun and cold continental periods can alternate quickly through winter. The high point at 2750 metres helps preserve snow above the village, while the larch forest offers visual reference lower down during storms. Upper Chabrières, Eyssina and Mayt terrain is more exposed. Wind can strip ridges, load depressions and shut individual lifts even when skiing continues normally closer to Les Claux.

This variation is especially relevant to freeskiers because park speed depends on surface consistency. Fresh snow slows in-runs, strong sun accelerates transformation, and overnight grooming can make morning landings much firmer than they were the previous afternoon. Riders should inspect every line before committing to larger features, wait until landings are clear and avoid stopping below blind knuckles. Big Air and advanced Eyssina features demand a different speed window from the initiation areas.

Outside marked pistes, the safety framework changes entirely. Larch glades and upper natural terrain can look easily accessible from lifts, but avalanche hazard, wind loading and route exits remain independent from the piste map. Beacon, shovel and probe belong to normal freeride preparation, together with partners who can use them and current regional avalanche information.

Mont Dauphin Guillestre Sits Fifteen Kilometres Away

The nearest rail gateway is Mont-Dauphin-Guillestre, approximately 15 kilometres from Vars. Daily paid shuttle connections operate between the station, Guillestre and the resort during winter, while the Paris-Austerlitz night train provides another route into the Southern Alps. Marseille and Aix-en-Provence connections can also be combined with regional trains or winter coach services, and the road approach reaches Vars through Guillestre.

Once in the resort, free local shuttles connect the Vars villages. That matters because the ski area is stretched along the valley rather than concentrated around one pedestrian base. Park riders generally gain the easiest freestyle access from Les Claux, while Sainte-Marie works well for riders planning long vertical laps through the lower part of the domain. Checking the morning lift map remains useful before committing to Risoul or exposed upper connections.

For a French freestyle road trip, Tignes represents a different model: higher glacier infrastructure, a deeper history of FIS freestyle and X Games competition, and a larger high-altitude training system. Vars answers with a more Southern Alps identity built around larch terrain, spring park filming, Eyssina shaping and the unique presence of Chabrières speed skiing.

Four Park Zones Beside A 255 Kilometre Per Hour Record

Vars combines elements that rarely share one resort identity. La Forêt Blanche supplies 185 kilometres of pistes, 36 lifts and 1100 metres of vertical. Vars Park spreads freestyle across four principal spaces with slopestyle, jib and boardercross progression. Dirty South Media and riders including Antony Fait, Maël Collado and Cylian Cotto connect those features with contemporary French ski-film culture. Chabrières then adds a completely different performance extreme through a piste that has produced both men's and women's world speed records.

That combination places Vars above a normal regional park resort. It does not have the Olympic or X Games history of France's most internationally decorated freestyle venues, but its park scale, rider culture, full-domain skiing and speed-skiing infrastructure give it genuine international relevance. Winter 2026-2027 runs from December 5 to April 11, with terrain climbing to 2750 metres and the freestyle system operating inside a 185-kilometre linked domain. For freeskiers, Vars is not a park attached to a resort; the park is one of the main ways the resort has learned to define itself.