LES ARCS, France — The resort of Les Arcs in the French Alps is renowned for having 125 miles of runs, a lift system that can take you all the way up to 10,500 feet, and a cable car that connects to the neighboring valley of La Plagne.

But I didn’t experience much of that on my week there. Instead, I spent a lot of my time at the resort’s highest station, Les Arcs 2000, falling down on the bunny slopes as I tried to learn to snowboard in a six-day group course.

Tucked away in the Savoy region, close to where France meets the borders of Switzerland and Italy, Les Arcs is probably not a name familiar to North American skiers and snowboarders. Its slopes, overlooked by Mont Blanc towering in the distance, attract mainly French visitors, including many families.

My wife and I chose the resort partly because a guidebook recommended it as one of the best places in Europe for beginner boarders and skiers.

I signed up for afternoon lessons with Ecole du Ski Francais, the main school at Les Arcs 2000, and joined a class of about two dozen. The class was split among French kids, and Dutch and British vacationers.

Our instructors were two easygoing, bronzed dudes who spoke both French and English.

We spent the first few days mastering basics on the bunny hill, where we learned to control our speed by leaning on the board’s front or back edge — or, as our teachers said, by “back hedging” or “front hedging.”

Everyone seemed to master sliding back and forth to some degree down the hill on one edge. But making a complete turn from one side to the other proved trickier.

The instructors kept exhorting us to “keep your body in line with ze board!” Some took to it more naturally than others, but one Dutch woman struggled. Two days in, she gave up in frustration.

Making a turn proved to be a challenge for me, too — the delicate exercise of shifting weight from my heels to toes (or vice versa) and keeping my weight over the front of the board instead of the back. The sensation that I was about to topple headfirst down the hill whenever I leaned forward was unnerving, and I fell countless times until I got it right. Unlike some of my classmates, I hadn’t brought along a pair of padded undershorts to protect my backside.

Off the slopes, I was glad we’d booked ourselves into a fully catered chalet. Each day, the young, mainly British staff cooked up a full breakfast, afternoon snack and delicious dinner, so we didn’t have to do it ourselves or hunt around for a decent place to eat.

Not that we’d have much luck. As we discovered, Les Arcs 2000 is a modernist super-resort built during the fever for architectural modernism that swept France in the 1960s and 1970s.

Unlike Swiss or Austrian ski areas that grew up around centuries-old villages, Les Arcs is a purpose-built ski resort plunked down on a mountainside — in this case at 6,500 feet or 2,000 meters up, hence the name. (Sister resorts 1600, at 5,250 feet, and 1800, at 5,900 feet, are lower down; a more recent addition, 1950, at, 6,400 feet, is next door.)

Les Arcs 2000 consists mainly of a line of big angular, timber-clad hotels with swooping rooflines that zigzag across the mountainside. There’s not much in the way of apres-ski, just a few bars and restaurants.

Back on the slopes, I made steady progress. When our group was split in two, halfway through the course, I was in the slightly more advanced group, which used more challenging runs farther up the mountains. One day, after a heavy snowfall, my teacher encouraged me to go off one of the pistes (what Europeans call runs) and into fresh powder. I glided silently over the virgin snow, picking up speed with little effort. A wave of exhilaration washed over me and suddenly, I discovered why people love to snowboard.

But others weren’t so lucky: Two Dutch guys gave up after one messed up his knee. One of the French boys in the other group broke his arm. Ben, from England, tore a stomach muscle and retired in excruciating pain. On the second-last day another Dutch woman, Kim, went down hard on her shoulder and was taken away by snowmobile.

If you go

LES ARCS, France

GETTING THERE

RATES

LESSONS

www.lesarcs.com and www .lesarcsnet.com or 011-33-4 7907-6800. Ski season until April 25.

Buses serve Les Arcs from airports including Grenoble (80 miles, 90 minutes by car), Lyon (125 miles, 2 ½ hours) Chambery (70 miles, 1 hour 20 minutes) and Geneva, Switzerland (125 miles, two hours). Bookings: www .transfer-intelligence.com. By train: Snow train from Paris and Lille; Eurostar from London; Thalys trains from Amsterdam and Brussels. Trains terminate at Bourg St. Maurice where a funicular takes you up to Les Arcs 1600. Free shuttle bus to the four resorts.

Ski pass options include six-day pass, euro203 ($260); one-day pass, euro42.50 ($54). Book rentals in advance at sites such as www.skiset.com, where skis, boots and poles for a week runs euro83-152 ($106-194); snowboard and boots, euro113 ($144).

Ecole du Ski Francais, www .esflesarcs.com. Six-day course, euro142 ($181). Packages including equipment available. Spirit 1950, www.spirit1950.com.