Les Rousses

Les Rousses sits at over a thousand meters on the high Jura plateau, close enough to Switzerland that you can see the border crossing from certain points on the trail network, and it markets itself, accurately, as the capital of French cross-country skiing. This is not a resort built around dramatic vertical drops the way the Alps are; the appeal here is space — rolling, forested plateau stretching in every direction, laced with what felt like an almost absurd number of groomed ski loops radiating out from the town and its lake.

Learning to ski the way the locals actually ski

I’d skied downhill before, badly, but cross-country was new to me, and Les Rousses turned out to be a forgiving place to be bad at something in public. We rented gear from a shop just off the main square where the owner, without being asked, spent ten minutes correcting my stride before we’d even left the parking lot, and then pointed us toward one of the easier loops around Lac des Rousses itself, frozen solid and ringed with fir trees dusted white. It took about an hour before the rhythm started to click, gliding rather than walking, and another hour after that before my legs reminded me I’d been doing something genuinely aerobic the entire time. Lia, who grew up skiing in the Alps, made it look infuriatingly effortless from the first stride.

A border town in every direction

Les Rousses’ position right against the Swiss frontier gives it a slightly hybrid feel — French Comté cheese and Swiss Gruyère both show up on the same restaurant menus, and a short drive takes you across the border into the Vallée de Joux, famous for its own lake and for the watchmaking ateliers that have operated there for centuries. In summer the same plateau becomes a mountain biking and hiking base instead, the Fort des Rousses, a huge 19th-century military fortress cut partly underground, opening for tours and now doubling as a cheese-aging site for Comté producers who use its constant cool temperature. We visited in winter, and the fort’s snow-topped ramparts against the flat white plateau were some of the starkest, quietest scenery of the whole trip.

When to go: December through March for snow-guaranteed cross-country skiing, given the altitude keeps conditions more reliable here than lower down in the Jura; June through September for hiking and mountain biking on the same trail network without the snow.