Auron was created in 1937 at 1,600 m on the territory of Saint-Étienne-de-Tinée, at the gates of the Mercantour National Park. It is the largest ski area in the Alpes-Maritimes and, like Isola 2000 up the next valley, it is close enough to the coast to make a strange kind of holiday possible.
How to get there: Nice is the nearest airport, under an hour and a half away by road up the Tinée valley. A gondola links the resort directly with the village of Saint-Étienne-de-Tinée below.
Slopes and lifts: 135 km of marked runs — green, blue, red and black — served by close to twenty lifts, between 1,250 m and 2,450 m.
What the skiing is like: a village resort rather than a purpose-built one, with more sun than the northern Alps and a season that depends more on snowfall than on altitude. The technical runs are better than the resort’s size suggests.
Where you stay: Auron is small, and hotels and apartments sit close to the lifts, so a car is not needed once you have arrived.
