Val d'Isère

Karting sur glace

Ice karting

Val d'Isère has one of the few outdoor ice karting tracks in France, at one thousand eight hundred and fifty metres, on a three-hectare driving site. The karts run on studded tyres and the ice is natural, not a manufactured rink, which means the track changes from day to day and even hour to hour, with the cold and the traffic. It is genuinely good fun, and more instructive than it looks: in fifteen minutes you understand physically what oversteer is and why you must look where you want to go rather than where the car is heading. Many parents ask us for it for a teenager who has just passed a driving test, and they are right. It is the outing we suggest when the weather ruins a day's skiing, or at the end of the afternoon before heading in: if it is snowing, so much the better, the track only improves. One caveat: a prolonged thaw closes it, because the ice is natural. We check the day before.

Combine it with

Motoneige avec guide

Snowmobile outing

Chiens de traîneau, sortie privée

Dog sledding

Duration

About fifteen minutes a session, longer if you string heats together

When to go

Winter, for as long as the ice holds. A thaw closes the track without notice

Pricing

From €75 per person

It is the most affordable activity in our Val d'Isère book, by a wide margin. The entry rate covers a session of around fifteen minutes. Most people take a second straight away, and the second is the good one, the first is spent realising that nothing handles the way it does on dry tarmac. Helmet and suit are provided. A timed format over several heats can be arranged on request, and that is what groups ask for.