Every ski day now has a familiar final run.
Skis or board off. Gloves drying. Phone out. Activity saved.
Then we wait for the orange thumbs to arrive 👍
Strava describes kudos as a quick way to congratulate someone for a noteworthy activity. For snowheads, they are the digital equivalent of your mates nodding approvingly after you casually reveal how much vertical you covered before lunch.
3 RESORTS. 3 VERY DIFFERENT CARDS.🃏🃏🃏
Chamonix, Whistler and Alpe d’Huez all feature among the 16 real-world resorts in Ready Steady Slope, but each brings a different personality to the table.
Chamonix is one of the toughest Resort cards in the deck, with two black pistes and no green. It rewards bold play.
Whistler is the accessible all-rounder, loaded with blues and ready to work with almost any hand.
Alpe d’Huez is perfectly balanced, with one green, one blue, one red and one black. A piste for every level. A card for almost every strategy.
That variety is exactly why we put them in the game.
Ready Steady Slope brings the mountain-day rivalry home. Pick your resort, collect your equipment, complete your pistes and outsmart your mates before they finish their own mountain. There are no GPS watches required. No chairlift queues either., but the bragging rights remain very real! 😃
SO WHAT MAKES A SKI RESORT KUDOS-WORTHY? 🎿👍
The top 3 share more than impressive vertical.
Each has a route people recognise immediately. Chamonix has the Vallée Blanche. Whistler has Peak to Creek. Alpe d’Huez has the Sarenne and in summer, those 21 famous cycling bends.
They also create activities that tell a story.
The line on the map travels from high alpine terrain to the valley. The elevation graph looks like a cliff face. The photos need no filter. Even the title practically writes itself.
The Strava app especially when paired with a Garmin watch, has become increasingly mountain-friendly too. Its latest features can track the number of downhill runs, total downhill distance and average speed, while automatically excluding time spent riding chairlifts. Your stats now reflect what happened on the piste rather than how long you spent suspended above it.
So, where should you ski or snowboard when you want an activity worthy of the group chat?
Based on skiable vertical, iconic descents and the sheer likelihood of producing a Strava map people stop scrolling to inspect, these are our top 3 ski resorts for Strava kudos, starting in reverse order...
3. CHAMONIX, FRANCE 🇫🇷
Big Mountain. Bigger Activity.
Chamonix comes in at our number three spot for Strava Kudos 🥉
It ranks third in our table by volume, but could be #1 based on Kudos per activity! It is the global home of Ski Mountaineering and the UTMB (Ulta-Trail du Mont Blanc). the world's premier running race.
Sitting beneath Mont Blanc, the resort offers around 2,807 metres of skiable vertical between the valley and the 3,842-metre Aiguille du Midi. That is the kind of number that makes a perfectly respectable local ski hill quietly close its Strava account.
Chamonix is spread across several separate mountain areas rather than one neatly connected piste network. Grands Montets brings steep, north-facing terrain. Brévent-Flégère delivers long reds, blues and huge Mont Blanc views. Les Houches and Le Tour offer broader, more forgiving cruising.
Then there is the Vallée Blanche.
Starting from the Aiguille du Midi, this legendary guided off-piste route descends for around 20 kilometres through glaciers, crevasses and towering granite peaks. It is one of the most famous ski journeys in the world and the sort of activity where the map, photos and vertical profile all compete for attention. Anyone tackling it should do so with the correct equipment and an experienced mountain guide.
A morning in Chamonix can produce more vertical, scenery and mountain drama than some entire ski holidays.
No wonder it tops our kudos podium. 👍 👍 👍
Explore Chamonix and its Ready Steady Slope Resort card.
2. WHISTLER, CANADA 🇨🇦
Two Mountains. One Giant Track.
Whistler Blackcomb takes second place 🥈
Whistler is the most logged resort globally, when combining Winder and Summer sports. The sheer number of runs puts it in contention automatically.
Whistler and Blackcomb sit side by side in the Coast Mountains of British Columbia, connected high above the valley by the PEAK 2 PEAK gondola. Together, they offer more than 200 marked runs across 8,171 acres of terrain.
That scale changes the shape of a ski day.
You can start in an open alpine bowl, disappear into tree-lined pistes, cross to the second mountain and still finish with a long descent into Whistler Village. What began as “a few easy laps” suddenly appears on Strava as a small expedition.
For one particularly impressive upload, head for Peak to Creek. The run drops from near the summit of Whistler Mountain towards Creekside, covering roughly 11 kilometres and more than 1,500 metres of vertical.
It is long, varied and hard on the legs. Perfect kudos material.
Whistler also runs as a genuine year-round mountain destination. When the snow disappears, the bikes arrive. The resort’s vast trail network and famous mountain bike park keep the Strava maps glowing throughout summer.
The season changes. The activity feed keeps moving.
Explore Whistler and its Ready Steady Slope Resort card.
1. ALPE D’HUEZ, FRANCE 🇫🇷
Winter Legs. Summer Legends.
Alpe d’Huez comes in at number 1 on the Kudos podium🥇 The resort takes the #1 spot not just for skiing but also because the ADH climb it is arguably the most famous Strava segment in the world. It is famous for its 21 hairpins, it spans 13.8km with 1,101m of vertical gain. The legendary Marco Pantani holds the overall KOM (37m 35s), while Sepp Kuss holds the fastest Tour de France time (39m 21s).
A single upload of a sub-hour climb can generate hundreds of kudos.🏔️🚴
The resort rises from its sunny plateau to the 3,330-metre Pic Blanc, delivering around 1,470 metres of skiable vertical and 250 kilometres of pistes across the wider domain.
Its biggest Winter Strava prize is the Sarenne.❄️
At approximately 16 kilometres, this famous black piste drops away from Pic Blanc and winds through the remote Sarenne gorge. It is long enough to burn through your legs, expose every flaw in your technique and make the final section feel considerably farther away than it looked on the piste map.
Complete it cleanly and you have earned the kudos.👍
Alpe d’Huez also has a second identity. When winter ends, the resort becomes one of cycling’s most famous destinations. The 21 hairpin bends leading up from Bourg-d’Oisans have hosted some of the Tour de France’s most dramatic battles and remain one of the ultimate Strava tests for amateur cyclists.
This year the stages to watch out for are
Stage 19: Gap → Alpe d’Huez
- 127.9 km, 3,500 m climbing. The stage finishes with the classic 13.7 km ascent of the 21 bends, averaging 8.1%.
Saturday 25 July 2026
Stage 20: Le Bourg-d’Oisans → Alpe d’Huez
- 170.9 km, a huge 5,450 m of climbing. This route includes the Col de la Croix de Fer, Col du Galibier and Col de Sarenne before another finish in Alpe d’Huez.
Few mountain destinations can produce an iconic skiing activity in winter and an equally recognisable cycling upload in summer. Watch out for the pro riders getting their well deserved kudos!
Explore Alpe d’Huez and its Ready Steady Slope Resort card.
No wonder it tops our Ready Steady Slope kudos podium. 👍 👍 👍
Explore the Game 🎿🏂
If that's put you in the mood and you'd like to play Ready Steady Slope, head over to the Where-tp-Buy page to find out where you can find your own copy.
*Strava doesn't publish figures per resort so the positions in the table for this article are based solely on our own research and estimates.