La Clusaz, in the Aravis range of Haute-Savoie, fills its calendar with sporting events that keep the village busy well outside the ski season. Le Bélier is the one that matters most, and it comes round three times a year:
- Le Bélier Blanc in January, on snow
- Le Bélier VTT in June, on mountain bikes
- Le Bélier Trail & Rando in August, on the trails
From 21 to 23 August 2026, La Clusaz hosted the 40th edition of Le Bélier Trail & Rando. For three days, runners, walkers and their families took over the village and the paths above it.
Le Bélier, 40 years of racing and more than 5,000 entrants
The race was created in 1986 and has changed scale entirely. Where that first edition drew fewer than 300 people, it now brings in more than 5,000 runners and walkers every year.
The anniversary edition offered an unusually wide spread of formats:
- trail races from 7 to 42 km
- the 84 km Super Bélier, which strings the distances together across the three days
- walking routes of 13 and 24 km, plus children's races
The 27 km remains the heart of the weekend. It is the original distance, first run in 1986, and it crosses some of the finest ground in the Aravis.
You will recognise the route if you ski at La Clusaz. It starts and finishes on the place de l'Église, with 1,035 metres of vertical gain. It runs past Les Confins, over the col des Aravis and up to the summit of Beauregard. The cut-offs fall at Crêt du Merle at 13 km and Beauregard at 21.6 km, two sectors you will already know from the piste map.
Le Bélier, a real asset for a four-season resort
Across its three editions, Le Bélier is part of what has turned La Clusaz into a resort that works all year rather than four months in twelve.
The Bélier Blanc drew more than 3,000 entrants on 9 and 10 January 2026, across snow trail, snowshoe and ski touring formats. The Bélier VTT brought in more than 1,200 on 13 and 14 June. January and June both fall outside the French school holidays, which keeps the village alive in the weeks when most Alpine resorts empty out, something you notice quickly if you spend time here outside February.
These weekends also bring in visitors who would never otherwise see the place without snow on it. A first summer here has a way of turning into a return visit, and sometimes into a search for a property.
What Le Bélier means for the La Clusaz property market
That level of attention, year after year, has done a great deal for how La Clusaz is seen by French and international buyers alike.
In 2026, flats sit at around €8,300 to €9,000 per square metre on average, while houses and chalets more often reach €9,000 to €12,000, with the most sought-after properties going beyond those figures.
Whether a resort has real life in it twelve months of the year has become a serious criterion for second-home buyers. Being able to use a chalet or a flat in August as readily as in February is a genuine asset today. Second homes account for nearly 70 % of transactions, which confirms how much buyers value a mix of personal use and rental investment.
For investors, that momentum shows up in prices. They are up by roughly 25 % to 35 % over the past ten years, supported by how little land is left to build on, by the quality of life here and by demand that keeps growing at home and abroad.
No one would pretend a single race sells a chalet. What a run of fixtures like this does is keep the name of the resort in circulation, and keep the village working, which is the sort of thing that shows up in values over a decade rather than a season. The same forces are at work across the wider massif, as set out in our piece on the Aravis property market and the 2030 Olympic Games.
Forty years on, Le Bélier has become rather more than a race. It is a real marker of what La Clusaz stands for, built around sport, the mountains and a way of life that runs through all four seasons. It helps position the resort as a premium place to live, to invest or to buy a second home in the mountains, a market where we work with sellers and buyers alike.
Le Bélier is run three times a year, on snow in January, on bikes in June and on the trails in August, which keeps a second home in use well beyond the ski season alone. If you are looking to buy here, browse luxury real estate in La Clusaz, and the chalets for sale in La Clusaz in particular. Our BARNES Aravis agents are based in the village itself.
