Exhilarating outdoor pursuits – thrills and excitement guaranteed!

Despite its relatively compact size, France boasts a huge range of extraordinarily diverse landscapes offering a huge choice of fun and often unique sporting activities!

SUMMER activities – from hang gliding to via ferrata

  • Paragliding course in Chamonix

    Former women’s paragliding champion Sandie Cochepain offers high-altitude paragliding sessions on the grandiose slopes of Mont Blanc

  • Paragliding and mountaineering, with Zeb Roche and Claire Bernier. Zeb is a mountain guide and son of a famous guide who claimed many mountaineering “firsts” in the Himalayas. Zeb was also the youngest paraglider (at the age of 17) to take off from the summit of Everest in a two-seater paraglider with his father.

  • Via ferrata : a unique Franco-Italian activity

  • Fantasticable rides : fly at speeds of 100km/hr connected to a cable

    In the mountains this is known as a “zip wire”, an activity in which you are secured into a full body harness connected to a pulley that slides along a cable 15-150m above the ground for over a kilometre, reaching speeds of up to 100km/hr. Enjoy this “hair-raising” attraction in the Vosges, the Ardennes and the Alps of the Haute-Savoie (Châtel).

  • Hot-air balloon rides above Mont Blanc

A French invention dating back to the 18C, the hot-air balloon offers a wonderful opportunity to fly slowly and silently above grandiose landscapes all round the world. However, a high-altitude flight above the Mont Blanc range, at altitudes above 4,000m, will provide an even greater sense of excitement and emotion.

  • Hot-air balloon rides above the châteaux of the Loire Valley

    Aerial views of the magnificent castles of the Loire provide a unique and spectacular insight into these listed UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

WINTER activities – from ice-fall climbing to ice diving and speed riding

  • Mont-Blanc Luxuary : ice-fall climbing and freeride skiing courses

  • Ice diving beneath frozen mountain lakes

- Dive Extreme, in Chamrousse (near Grenoble)
- Tignes Plongée, at the Espace Killy
- Oser, in Orcières 1850

  • Speedriding: a cross between freeride skiing and paragliding

    Speedriding involves a combination of skiing down steep slopes and taking to the air at full speed for a few dozen metres at a time. Learn all about this spectacular new sport on a course with a qualified instructor.
    - Speedriding-School, in Les Arcs
    - Information on speed riding schools (in French): hang gliding and paragliding federation .