Two very different mountains from Nice
The Southern Alps start just outside the city. Isola 2000, Auron and Valberg are reached within a morning, in one run, and they price as ordinary fixed-fare transfers.
The Northern Alps are a different job. Courchevel, Méribel, Val Thorens, Val d’Isère, Tignes, Megève and Chamonix take a full day on the road, with a planned break and an arrival timed against resort access rather than against your landing slot. At that length the fare passes the thresholds of automatic pricing, so booking goes through a quote confirmed within the hour. That is deliberate: a journey of this size is not sold on a click.
Winter equipment is law, and not only at altitude
The common mistake is to assume the obligation starts where the snow starts. It starts at an administrative boundary. French mountain law applies from 1 November to 31 March, in the communes listed by prefectoral order, department by department.
The difference between departments matters. In Savoie and Haute-Savoie the requirement covers every road in the department: a car entering Savoie unequipped is already in breach before it leaves the valley floor. In the Hautes-Alpes the prefecture likewise took the whole road network. In the Alpes-Maritimes and in Isère the rule applies instead to a list of communes, which has to be checked place by place. Isola and Saint-Étienne-de-Tinée, the communes covering Isola 2000 and Auron, are both on it.
The satnav trap: closed passes
The Isola 2000 winter guide prints a warning that few routing engines take into account: the Col de la Lombarde and the Col de la Bonette are closed in winter. An engine reasoning purely on distance will offer one of them, and send a car to a barrier.
Reopening dates are not fixed. Over the last season the Lombarde reopened on 23 May 2026, and the Bonette was only open at night from 26 May, after several weeks limited to daytime hours. This is exactly the sort of thing that cannot be improvised the evening before.
The real bottleneck is not the resort
Heading into the Tarentaise, the hard point is the RN90 between Albertville and Moutiers. The official French traffic forecast for the weekend of 7 to 9 February 2025 advised against that road from 9 am to 7 pm on the Saturday, ten hours straight. A transfer reaching Albertville after 9 am on a February Saturday has no margin left.
Arrival is regulated too. Since 1 October 2025 Isola 2000 has thirteen short-stop bays across five sectors, free for a maximum of thirty minutes, in force seven days a week from 9 am to 9 pm. Thirty minutes is enough to unload skis, provided you know where to stop.
Ski luggage, and what moves to a quote
One pair of skis per passenger fits within the stated capacity: two large cases in a saloon, six in a van. Beyond that, or for oversized gear such as a golf bag or an extra board coffin, the booking engine stops producing a price and opens a quote request instead.
What we do not do: we do not rent equipment, we do not fit a roof box to a partner vehicle without prior agreement, and we do not promise a firm arrival time on a day when a closure has been announced. A closed road is not negotiable.