"Lean further to the right, facing the slope, snowplow!" At Les Orres ski resort, students perched on their skis listened attentively to the instructor and slid down the slope. Nothing out of the ordinary so far in the Hautes-Alpes ski resort in southeastern France. However, the students weren't racing down one of the resort's 36 slopes but were instead skiing along a continuously moving synthetic carpet inside a building. More precisely, they were in the Pôle Sport Innovation, a brand-new two-story building spanning 1,100 square meters, located at the foot of the resort's slopes.
The eight-by-10-meter sloping ski carpet is one of the indoor complex's flagship facilities. "It's an exceptional training tool for all levels," said Sébastien Aubert, director of the Les Orres ski school. To recreate the skiing experience, colorful geometric shapes are projected onto the carpet serve to as a track to follow and obstacles to move around. Additionally, a giant screen and a camera allow skiers to watch themselves skiing in real time. In a room upstairs, five simulators use virtual reality headsets displaying local scenes recorded by drone, enabling users to try out mountain biking, paragliding, canoeing and even downhill skiing.
Though the French Court of Auditors criticized French ski resorts on February 6 for their excessive reliance on downhill skiing, the Les Orres resort has a lot riding on diversifying its activities. The resort has allocated €5.2 million in funding, half of that amount coming from subsidies. Nevertheless, the resort is not among the less fortunate, boasting a peak altitude of over 2,700 meters, a northeast orientation conducive to snowfall, and an arsenal of 275 artificial snow cannons and lances.
"Based on scientific studies, skiing will continue in Les Orres in 2050. However, we don't want to rest on this achievement; the economic model of resorts is evolving," explained Pierre Vollaire, mayor of Les Orres and vice president of the National Association of Mountain Resort Mayors. "We haven't found an equivalent to downhill skiing in terms of added value," he admitted, as the resort still generates 90% of its revenue from downhill skiing, despite the growth in summer activity, thanks in particular to mountain biking.
Indoor ski carpets like the one at Les Orres are still few and far between in France. They also tend to be confined to ski clubs and for professional training. "We're on the cusp of a change in this respect," said Denis Dumax-Baudron, the technical director of Ski Indoor 4810, the company that developed the ski carpet and has already installed the same equipment in Passy, Haute-Savoie, as well as in Nîmes, in southern France.
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