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Resort: Les Rousses
Country: France
Domain: none
Author: homphomp
Date: 20 & 22 February
Our holiday: Didn't want to do a mega ski resort in the peak of school holidays (been there, done that, got bored in the life queues!) So these were two day trips out of a week mostly spent doing other things. Planned for three days but were rained off the last one!
Website : www.lesrousses.com
Basics : Les Rousses is a little known (outside France) ski area in the Haut Jura. We were staying down below the Jura mountains and drove up for two individual day trips.
Lift system : This is an odd sort of area....there are five or so small lift served areas linked together by a regular bus service. Each of the main stations has one chair and otherwise served by drag lifts (some long and definitely worth of the "Teleski dificile" sign at the bottom! There are a couple of really tiny areas with just a drag lift but we didn't get to these.
The terrain : The terrain is suprisingly interesting for such a small area....ranging from some fairly steepish greens through to a black or two. The largest linked area (La Dole/Tuffes) runs over into Switzerland and had enough skiing to keep us amused for a single day trip. We also checked out the La Serra area which again had some interesting skiing....but only enough for a morning so we hopped in the car and moved on to Jouvancelles in the afternoon. Sadly snow conditions meant the off-piste was skiied out but it looked like it would be great on a good snow day. There isn't enough to keep a strong skier happy for more than two or three days but it would be fun for a long weekend....blue run skiers would find more than enough to keep them happy for a while....the difficult drags would make the resort hard for complete beginners, the number of bodies on the side of the drag runs each time we went up were quite amazing!!
The snow : The area is very low, ranging from 1000 to 1600m so snow is unreliable....bearing in mind that this season has been so awful we were suprised to find relatively good conditions in the area. A couple of the linking sections were getting badly worn but otherwise it was pretty good....sadly the low altitude meant rain on the last day we had planned to ski. I don't think I'd pre-plan a holiday here because of the altitude.
Off-piste : Snow conditions didn't permit any exploration of the off-piste, but there looked to be plenty of opportunties to play in the trees and between the pistes....no doubt a guide would be able to find some good terrain.
The resort : The village of Les Rousses looks quite nice but we didn't stay there so can't really comment. None of the ski slopes is actually by the village itself so its a 5minute bus ride or car journey to the slopes from any of the accommodation in the village.
Food : La Taverne in Jouvencelles was excellent....limited menu (daily cheese dish, daily meat dish or sarnies) the food was delicious and very good value, just 35 euros for a two course meal for two with a carafe of wine. The nameless self service in La Serra was also great with good food and very low prices!
Accommodation : Not applicable
Costs: Just 26 euros for a full area pass for the day....very good value.
Conclusion: We'd definitely go back for a weekend trip but only late availability to make sure that the snow was in good conditions. It's not a mega resort but if you're into something different and don't mind skiing the same run more than once then it's well worth checking out.

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