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Flaine: Flaine is the name of a ski area located in the Haute Savoie region of the French Alps, and is a part of the linked Grand Massif domain. It is located in the territory of the communes of Magland and Arâches. Flaine is linked to Samoëns, Morillon, Les Carroz and Sixt-Fer-à-Cheval, with 267km of pistes in total. It featured the first 8 seater high speed chairlift, called Les Grands Vans, and snow cannons to be installed in France. Classic runs in Flaine include Gers (Black); le Diamant Noir (black); Serpentine (blue/red); Ballacha (blue/green) and Mephisto (red). The liaisons ski runs which take you out of Flaine, take you to Samöens, Morillon and Les Carroz via the run Dolomie (blue) and to the smaller ski resort Sixt via the long, and quite flat run, Les Cascades (blue). In Les Carroz, Morrilion, and Samőens classic runs include Marvel; a fabulously long green that goes through the forest, Sairon; a long blue with many jumps and banks on the side of the piste, Lou Darbes; a medium length blue run that is downhill all the way - an excellent run for 'bombing' down. The predominantly north-facing runs are very reliable: package companies offering "snow guarantees" often import punters from other French resorts when their pistes have lost the amount of sufficient snow that can be safely skied on. Interestingly, in each different grade of run (green, blue, red, & black) there is a theme in the Flaine bowl. For example most of the blue runs are named after rocks/jewels (e.g. turquoise, dolomie, crystal, emeraude), nearly all the reds are diabollically named (e.g. faust, mephisto, belzebuth, lucifer) and most black runs after stars (e.g. diamant noir, agate). This only occurs in the Flaine valley though; the other resorts' runs are named separately. However the same named to feature in the different resorts. For example "combe" which means valley in English is a popular name because of the nature many runs leading into the valleys. Information from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flaine
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