Les Portes du Soleil is major ski sports destination in the nothern French Alps (Chablais Alps) encompassing thirteen resorts between Mont Blanc in France and Lake Geneva in Switzerland. With more than 650 km of marked pistes and about 200 lifts in total, spread over 14 valleys and about 400 square miles (1036 square km), the Portes du Soleil ranks among the largest ski areas in the world.

Almost all of the pistes are connected by lifts - only a few marginal towns can only be reached by the free bus services in the area. The highest point of skiing is approximately 2400 metres and the lowest is approximately 900 metres.

As with many other alpine ski resorts, the lower slopes of the Portes du Soleil have snow making facilities to extend the skiable season by keeping the lower slopes open during the warmer months.

Skiing

The Portes du Soleil is among the largest skiareas in the world and it takes some time to get at hold of the main pistemap. All resorts have detailed maps of their respective parts of the system.

There is a main circuit through most of the Swiss and some of the French resorts (Chatel-Morgins-Champussin-Les Crosets/Champery-Avoriaz-Chatel) that can be skied in both clockwise and counterclockwise directions. The average skier or boarder will spend most of a day doing the circuit. Apart from a short bus ride between lift stations in Chatel and a short walk in Morgins, the circuit can be skied without taken of skis or snowboards. There are places on the circuit (espcially in Morgins) where one might experience sparse snow or even will have to go down by chairlift late in the season.

Finally it should be noted that skiing the ciruit counterclocwise means having to either ski the famous La Chavanette also known as "Le Mur" or suffer the humiliation of taking the chairlift down. Doing the circuit one will have to leave out numerous tempting and testing options and bypass the two major areas not on the maincircuit. One is the Torgon/Abondance area witch is connected by lift to Chatel and the other is the Morzine/Les Gets area which is linked by lift to Avoriaz. Both are large and testing areas in themselves - The Morzine/Les Gets area in itself has around 150km of marked runs

Resorts

There are twelve resorts in the Portes du Soleil area of which 9 are french and 5 are swiss. Most of the resorts have grown around traditional valley villages - only Avoriaz and the very small Les Crosets and Torgon are purpose built during the mid-sixties. Morzine and Chatel are the largest of the traditional towns in the area. As a whole the skiing is low altitude compared to most French destinations. The highest skiing is just below 2500 metres (7500 feet) and the lowest approximately 900 metres (2700 feet).

The area is heavily influenced by the microclimate between the Lake Geneva and Mont Blanc which generates very substantial snowfall between November and April making it possible to keep the area open to skiing typically from early December until mid to late April. Some of the lower stations close around April 1 or earlier depending on snow conditions though

Information taken from Wikipedia