The Sybelles. A name that seems straight out of a fairy tale. The view is indeed enchanting when you go to “Les 3 Lacs”, the highest point of this ski area in the Alps: 2620 meters. To the east, a vast plateau, the Ouillon, reveals its white coat. Then ridges, those of the Grande Casse and the Lauzière massif, dominate an almost lunar landscape. In the distance, the eye also encounters, inexorably, the imposing Mont Blanc… Towards the South, the Belledonne barrier displays its countless crests. A peak, the Etendard, culminating at 3465 meters in the Grandes Rousses massif, tears the sky as if to better mark the limit of the valleys of Oisans and Meije, identifiable with its ridges and glaciers.
The highlight of this snowy spectacle: three “teeth” emerge from the peaks. The needles of Arves, emblem of the Sybelles estate. Unmissable. And below this landscape flows a river, the Arvan, which crosses two inseparable stations, also in the Sybelles domain: Saint-Jean d’Arves and Saint-Sorlin d’Arves. So much for the panorama. But let’s leave the snowy peaks of the estate for a moment to go back down to these two villages, and thus better understand the history of the Sybelles…
What are the best ski resorts in the Alps?
Since 1937, a desire to connect these isolated villages
What exactly are the Sybelles? The fourth ski area in France, which extends over approximately 400 hectares, located in the Arves massif, in the Maurienne. Geographically, we are in Savoie, on the border with Isère and the Hautes-Alpes. But Les Sybelles is above all an alliance of six villages and resorts: Saint-Sorlin d’Arves, Saint-Jean d’Arves, La Toussuire, Le Corbier, Les Bottières and Saint-Colomban-des-Villards. So many different entry points to enter this large area comprising 136 ski slopes (310 kilometers), and whose epicenter is the Ouillon plateau, a sort of “platform” of the Sybelles area. A landscape full of valleys, valleys and rocky peaks.
Connecting resort villages is an idea that is not new. If ski lifts appeared in 1937 on the La Toussuire mountain pastures (a ski lift park which ceased to grow from the end of the 1930s to the 1970s, notably with the creation of the Corbier station in 1967), a first connection left these mountainous lands in 1975, where the first mechanical climbs saw the light of day between the villages of Bottières and La Toussuire.
“We can consider that this is the beginning of the Sybelles project”says Aurélie Guyomarch, Sybelles communications manager. Five years later, a ski lift linked two other villages in the area: Saint-Jean d’Arves and Le Corbier. The canvas was therefore beginning to take shape… But there was not yet any question of an inter-village connection via the Ouillon plateau. For this, it was necessary to convince the commune of Saint-Sorlin d’Arves, a historic village in the Arves valley, to which Ouillon belonged. But the town was initially reluctant to accept this idea… Why then? You have to stroll through this village, located at an altitude of 1,550 meters, to find the answers… hidden in its heritage.
The first refuges of the Sybelles. © Charles Brunet
Saint-Sorlin d’Arves, the heritage spearhead of the estate
Saint-Sorlin, which can be reached by train to Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne, then by bus, is a traditional croquignolet village. Well anchored in pastoral values and the Catholic faith. Attached since the 6th century to the diocese of Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne, Saint-Sorlin was French one day, Piedmontese another day (like Maurienne, one of the six historic provinces of Savoy, which, from the 18th to the 19th century, was the toy of incessant alliances and conquests between France and the kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia).
For a long time the town lived solely from agriculture and livestock. Witness this is the current Fromagerie Coopérative de la Vallée des Arves, located in the village, which collects and transforms milk from farmers in the surrounding communities into a local cheese: Beaufort (now classified AOP). Another witness to this pastoral history is the village church, named after Saint-Saturnin, protector of the sheep. Built in 1658, it is typical of the churches and chapels of Maurienne. Baroque to perfection, its exuberance is in line with these religious buildings built during the Counter-Reformation (late 17th to 17th centuries) to assert the superiority of Catholicism over the Reformation of Luther and Calvin. Placed on a mound and surrounded by a cemetery, its baroque interior was financed by the inhabitants of the village thanks to the sale of their Beaufort!
“The altarpiece would have cost a hundred cows”says Aurélie Guyomarch. In Saint-Sorlin, old farms, today typical Maurienne dwellings (stone facades inhabited on two floors, a wooden attic covered with a sloping roof with large awnings), also bear witness to these agricultural activities in this village, which, originally, was made up of 14 hamlets. The inhabitants were carpenters, shoemakers, weavers… They lived on the ground floor, with the animals, to heat themselves. Upstairs, using an opening under the slope of the roof, cereals, hay, straw were stored… During village festivals, the women wore splendid colorful costumes, all embroidered (some are exhibited in the touching and dusty museum of Life in the past, located in the old village rectory). Until the middle of the 19th century, Saint-Sorlin experienced, thanks to agricultural life, a significant population, despite constant difficulties: looting, floods, avalanches, mudslides, fires (39 houses were burned in 1897, etc.) but also epidemics, such as that of the plague, in 1630, which decimated the population of Maurienne.
Between 1984 and 2003, twenty years of obstacles before the Sybelles were born
And what about skiing in all this then? In Saint-Sorlin, we began making wooden boards for sliding in 1905. Then we created a ski club in 1932.”Ski lifts did not yet exist, and we went up by calf strength”explains Aurélie Guyomarch. Then the ski lifts appeared, from the end of the 1930s to the end of the 1970s… “A decisive step was taken in 1984, when Saint-Jean d’Arves, Le Corbier, Toussuire and Les Bottières were connected, not by the Ouillon, but via a surrounding valley”says Samuel Leroux, deputy general director of the estate. Enough to reassure the most skeptical of this project. But the Ouillon plateau, located at 2431 meters, still remained the primary objective of this interconnection. Problem is, Saint-Sorlin was, at the time, more receptive to a connection with another resort, located a little further away: L’Alpe-d’Huez. Is it the crisis experienced by the resorts of the Arves valley in the 1990s (collapse in property values, lack of snow)? Is it the popularity of the Winter Olympics in Albertville in 1992 or the construction of a highway in Maurienne? Still, Saint-Sorlin realized that a project connected to Ouillon was strategic for Maurienne. In 1994, the municipality therefore joined in the creation of a New Tourist Unit (UTN), a mandatory procedure for a new mountain tourism project. It took nearly ten years of fighting and political negotiations to reach an agreement. The name of the domain was found in 1998: Sybelles, reflection of six beautiful resorts. In 2003, Saint-Sorlin d’Arves was connected to the entire estate by Ouillon.
For more than 20 years, Les Sybelles, whose clientele is mainly French and family (the Sybelles package represents 90% of packages sold for a one-week stay), has constantly renewed its equipment of 68 ski lifts. (ski lifts, chairlifts, cable cars, etc.) in order to reduce travel time to reach the heights of the area. Today, ecology dictates that eco-responsible decisions are made as a priority. “We want to achieve carbon neutrality by 2037”affirms Samuel Leroux. How to do it? “Since 2019, 100% of the energy used by ski lifts is produced by renewable energies and we have reduced the consumption of grooming equipment by 20% thanks to new technologies”, he adds. Tomorrow’s challenge? Drastically reduce the production of artificial snow, which the general public knows as artificial snow. “For beneath the snow there are pastures, and we hold on to them”concludes Samuel Leroux. “We want the Sybelles area to remain a place as popular with skiers in winter as it is with biodiversity in summer.” A message that can only appeal to Saint-Sorlin d’Arves, where the Saint-Saturnin church, named after the protector of the sheep, seems to ensure more than ever this balance between tourism and tradition.
