HORS LIGNE - Freeride, Pente Raide & Freestyle dans les Aravis

Profile and significance Jean Tonnelier is a French freeski athlete from La Clusaz whose skiing has evolved from contest freeride into steep-slope mountain lines that sit closer to modern “ski de montagne” than to park-only freestyle. He appears in the official athlete listings of the Freeride World Tour as a Ski Men competitor, and his recent results show the classic pathway of a young freerider working through qualifiers. What makes Tonnelier stand out is the way he connects disciplines: an alpine foundation, a freeride competition background, and a freestyle instinct for timing and balance that he now applies to exposed terrain where consequences are higher and control matters as much as airtime.... Read more on the Athlete page

Overview and significance La Clusaz is a Haute-Savoie classic with five linked massifs—Beauregard, Manigod, Étale, Aiguille, and Balme—spread between about 1,100 m and 2,600 m. The official figures tell the story for mileage and variety: roughly 125 km of runs served by 47 lifts and more than 1,500 m of vertical from the top of Balme down to the village, with the broader Aravis area extending options to around 210 km on a regional pass. For freeskiers, the mix is unusually complete for a mid-size French domain: playful tree-lined sectors for fast repetitions, a headline alpine bowl at Balme for freeride when stability allows, and a renewed park program under the LCZ banner for rail and jump work (alpine skiing overview).... Read more on the Location page

” In winter, it commonly refers to the linked destination identity built around La Clusaz, Le Grand-Bornand, Manigod, and Saint-Jean-de-Sixt, with shuttle connections and combined products marketed under the Aravis umbrella. For freeskiers, Les Aravis matters because it offers multiple “styles” of riding in a small geographic footprint: La Clusaz’s long-standing freeski identity and dedicated slopestyle-style park build, Le Grand-Bornand’s park infrastructure that’s explicitly designed to be accessible across levels, and a local culture that treats freestyle and freeride as normal parts of a winter week—not special occasions. Add recurring official-level competition touchpoints in the valley, and you get a region that reliably shows up on European freeride and freestyle radars without needing the scale of the biggest Alpine super-resorts.... Read more on the Location page

Brand overview and significance Mammut is a Swiss mountain sports brand founded in 1862 in Dintikon as a rope-making workshop and now based in Seon. Over more than 160 years it has grown from hand-twisted ropes into a global head-to-toe specialist for alpine sports, with a particularly strong footprint in skiing, ski touring and avalanche safety. Today Mammut produces technical apparel, backpacks, avalanche airbags, Barryvox avalanche transceivers, ropes, harnesses and more, with a clear focus on safety and reliability in serious terrain.... Read more on the Sponsor page

Brand overview and significance Völkl is one of skiing’s defining names: a Bavarian manufacturer that has been building skis in Straubing, Germany, since the early 1920s and today stands as the country’s last large-scale ski factory. What started as a family workshop making wagons, boats and sleds evolved into a dedicated ski operation, with early models sold under the name “Vöstra,” a contraction of Völkl and Straubing. A century later, the company is still designing and pressing skis in the same town, now as part of the Elevate Outdoor Collective alongside Marker and Dalbello, but with a distinctly German engineering identity and a “Made in Germany” stamp that still means something to many riders.... Read more on the Sponsor page