Where to stay near Ecrins National Park: the 4 areas to know in 2026

Our tips for booking the right place

• Seven valleys, and you do not visit two in one day: The park authority names the park's seven valleys itself: the Briançonnais, the Vallouise, the Embrunais, the Champsaur, the Valgaudemar, the Valbonnais and the Oisans. From Gap, the gaps are considerable: 16 minutes for the Champsaur, 44 for the Embrunais, 48 for the Valgaudemar, 1 hour 32 for Briançon, 2 hours 09 for La Grave. And from one valley to the next you have to come back down: 37 minutes separate the Champsaur from the Valgaudemar, though both are in the south of the massif. The reason is in the park's own figures, more than 150 summits above 3,000 metres for valley floors around 1,000: what separates the valleys is mountains.
• A bivouac is bought in hours of walking, not in euros: Cloclo writes « You can bivouac in summer », and the park authority confirms it while setting out the rule: camping is forbidden in the core of the park, bivouacking is allowed there from 7 pm to 9 am only, more than an hour's walk from any road access or from the limits of the core, which are marked by small blue-white-red flags. No fire, no litter left, no noise. In other words, a night under canvas is earned by an hour of climbing: it belongs to a multi-day walk, not to the evening you arrive. Cloclo adds the detail that counts: « bring a few warm clothes, because you are at altitude and the evenings are chilly ».
• The refuges, and what the park says about them: The massif holds around forty refuges, most of them inside the core of the park, open in the fine season or in winter. Cloclo cites them as the other way of sleeping high: you can « sleep in one of the many refuges the park holds ». We serve none of them on this page, since we cannot book them for you, and a button that leads nowhere is worth less than an absence. What matters for choosing your valley: a refuge is earned on foot from a valley floor, so the first night is spent down below, in one of the zones above.
• What our four members saw, and what they did not: Three of our four members give 5 out of 5; Maud gives 4. She had come for the wolves and did not see them, but writes « We were also able to make out various species of mammals and wild birds ». Emilee is cautious too: « We saw what must have been a golden eagle, an enormous bird! ». JeromeA, for his part, saw « several chamois » and sums up the rest in a few words, « the mountains, the birds of prey and the silence ». The park reports 417 vertebrate species, including 75 mammals and 235 birds, across 93,000 hectares of core: at that scale, seeing one particular animal is a matter of luck, and our members write so without any difficulty.
• Gap is not in the park, and that is worth knowing: This page's reference point is 2 kilometres from the centre of Gap, and Gap lies outside the core of the park: the authority places the massif « between Gap, Grenoble and Briançon » and has set its headquarters at the Domaine de Charance, in the town. Sleeping in Gap is therefore a logistical choice, not a mountain one: the town gives access to the Champsaur in 16 minutes, to the Embrunais in 44 and to the Valgaudemar in 48, but every day of walking starts with a drive. Of the four zones, it is the only one where we hold a listing of our own, with a member's review, nutricool, who gives 4 out of 5.