Skiing in Les Gets: Portes du Soleil & Family Slopes

Les Gets is a ski resort in the Portes du Soleil, a large linked ski area offering pistes suited to beginners, intermediates and families, plus a well-regarded snowpark on Mont Chéry. The resort sits at 1,172 metres and connects by lift and piste to Morzine, Avoriaz and the Swiss resorts across the valley. Skiing in Les Gets suits mixed-ability groups, families and freestyle skiers more than those hunting extreme vertical drops or glacier skiing, since there is none of the latter here.

Where Val d’Isère performs for the cameras and Courchevel performs for the credit card statement, Les Gets simply gets on with being a proper French village that happens to have some genuinely good skiing attached to it. There is no faux-alpine shopping arcade, no helicopter pad doubling as a car park. There is a church with an onion dome, a scattering of farmhouses that predate the lift pylons by a couple of centuries, and – this being the point – slopes on both sides of the valley that cater to almost everyone except the terminally extreme.

Les Gets Ski Area at a Glance

Altitude: 1,172m to around 2,000m within the immediate Les Gets sectors, rising higher across the wider Portes du Soleil. Two main sectors: Mont Chéry (quieter, more varied terrain) and Chavannes/Ranfolly (the link to Morzine and beyond). Over 600km of linked pistes across the full Portes du Soleil domain with a single lift pass. No glacier skiing. Strong for beginners, families and freestylers; less suited to those chasing high-altitude guarantees in a thin snow year.

Skiing in Les Gets: The Portes du Soleil Ski Area

The appeal of skiing in Les Gets lies less in any single dramatic peak and more in the sheer scale of what a lift pass unlocks. The Portes du Soleil links a dozen villages across the French-Swiss border, which means a lazy intermediate can, in theory, ski to Switzerland for lunch and back without ever removing their skis – a fact that still seems to astonish people who grew up thinking of national borders as things involving passport queues rather than a blue piste.

Les Gets itself occupies two distinct sectors. The Chavannes and Ranfolly lifts carry skiers up towards the connection with Morzine and the rest of the circuit, while the Mont Chéry side, reached by its own gondola from the village, offers a smaller but noticeably less crowded network of runs with genuinely good tree-lined skiing when the cloud comes down. Locals tend to disappear there on busy weekends while everyone else queues for the connecting lifts. Worth remembering.

Best Pistes in Les Gets by Ability Level

Beginner Pistes in Les Gets

Les Gets has a genuinely good reputation for nursery slopes, with gentle green runs around the village base and on the lower stretches of Chavannes allowing first-timers to build confidence without the humiliation of an audience. The wide, rolling blues further up the Chavannes sector give new skiers room to find their rhythm before anyone suggests they attempt a red.

Intermediate Pistes in Les Gets

This is where the resort earns its keep. The red runs linking Ranfolly to Morzine and onward into the wider Portes du Soleil are long, varied and rarely overcrowded by French standards, giving confident intermediates hours of cruising without repeating the same run twice. Mont Chéry’s reds are quieter still and better maintained for powder lovers on a soft day.

Advanced Pistes in Les Gets

Those wanting steeper gradients will find the black runs on Mont Chéry the most rewarding, along with some of the steeper, mogul-strewn pitches that appear on the Swiss side of the Portes du Soleil circuit once you have put in a day’s travel to reach them. Les Gets is not primarily a black-run resort, and anyone arriving expecting Chamonix-style couloirs will be disappointed; it is not that sort of mountain, and does not pretend to be.

Off-Piste Skiing in Les Gets

Off-piste opportunities exist, particularly around the Mont Chéry sector and in pockets off the main Ranfolly runs, where tree skiing after a fresh dump can be genuinely excellent. Given the resort’s relatively modest altitude, snow conditions off-piste can vary considerably through the season, and a local guide is essential rather than optional – both for route-finding through the trees and for reading conditions that change fast at this height. Freeride itineraries connecting into the Swiss side of the Portes du Soleil reward those with a guide, a full avalanche kit and a realistic sense of their own ability; the terrain punishes overconfidence more reliably than it rewards bravado.

Ski Schools in Les Gets

As with most French resorts, the ESF maintains a strong presence in Les Gets, running group and private lessons across all ability levels, alongside several independent and international instructor outfits offering English-language tuition, off-piste coaching and freestyle sessions for those eyeing the snowpark. Lesson demand peaks hard during French school holidays, so booking ahead – particularly for private tuition – is worth the small effort it takes.

Equipment Hire in Les Gets

Rental shops cluster around the base of the main lifts and along the village’s central streets, offering everything from entry-level packages for first-timers to high-performance carving and freeride setups for those who prefer not to travel with their own skis. Booking online in advance generally secures better equipment and shorter queues than turning up on a Saturday morning hoping for the best, which is precisely what most people continue to do.

Best Runs in Les Gets

For sheer mileage and variety, the long red descent from Ranfolly down towards Morzine is hard to beat, offering a genuine sense of travelling somewhere rather than simply looping a lift. On the Mont Chéry side, the tree-lined reds through to the lower village give a different kind of pleasure entirely – quieter, more technical, and considerably better on a flat-light day when the open runs elsewhere turn into a featureless white blur.

Snowpark in Les Gets

Les Gets has long held a strong reputation among freestyle skiers and snowboarders, with its snowpark on the Chavannes sector offering jumps, rails and features across several difficulty zones, from first-timers testing a small kicker to experienced riders working through larger lines. The park is well maintained through the season and attracts a dedicated freestyle crowd, giving the resort a youthful energy that sits slightly at odds with its otherwise traditional, farmhouse-and-church character – a contrast that somehow works rather well.

Glacier Skiing Near Les Gets

There is no glacier skiing in Les Gets or the immediate Portes du Soleil area, and it is worth being clear-eyed about this before booking: at the altitudes involved, snow reliability depends heavily on the season, particularly on lower slopes early and late in the winter. The wider domain’s snowmaking infrastructure helps bridge thinner years, and the north-facing Mont Chéry sector tends to hold its snow better than most, but those wanting glacier guarantees should look elsewhere in the Alps.

Après Ski in Les Gets

Après ski in Les Gets leans convivial rather than raucous – think mulled wine on a terrace and unhurried conversation rather than tables being danced upon, which is very much Morzine’s department down the valley. Bars around the village centre fill gently from mid-afternoon, with a slower, more social rhythm that suits families and couples rather than those seeking an all-night circuit. It is, depending on your temperament, either a relief or a mild disappointment.

Best Ski-In Ski-Out Options in Les Gets

Properties positioned near the Chavannes and Mont Chéry lift bases offer the most convincing ski-in ski-out access, cutting out the twice-daily shuttle-bus negotiation that otherwise eats into skiing time. For those prioritising this kind of convenience alongside genuine comfort after a day on the slopes, a luxury ski chalet in Les Gets is the ideal base, combining direct or near-direct slope access with the kind of space, privacy and hot tub recovery that a hotel room rarely manages.

For a fuller picture of the village beyond the pistes – its markets, its restaurants, its considerably more relaxed pace in summer – the Les Gets Travel Guide covers the rest of what makes this corner of the Portes du Soleil worth returning to, season after season.

Les Gets Ski FAQs