Extreme Sports: Exhilaration in the Great Outdoors

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 (External link)

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

  • Paragliding and mountaineering (External link) , 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 (External link) : a unique Franco-Italian activity

  • Fantasticable rides (External link) : 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 (External link)

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.

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

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