From ice floating to fatbiking in the snow: there’s more to Val d’Isère than skiing

The author tries out the ice floating experience. All photographs by Phoebe Smith/the Guardian Photograph: Phoebe Smith

Lit up by over a kilometre of orange lights, the daunting 1,400 metre piste stretched out in front of me. Taller than Ben Nevis, the UK’s highest mountain, the run, called La Face de Bellevarde, starred in the 1992 Albertville Winter Olympics and has attracted hardcore skiers and off-piste aficionados to Val d’Isère for decades.

But I’m a ski novice, and thankfully my view of Bellevarde wasn’t from the top of the run. I was perched high in the treetops opposite, in a harness clipped to a particularly sturdy pine tree.