St Lary Bike Park and Ax Les Thermes Bike Park

[FartingFury-]

St Lary: (Disclosure: Visited last summer, not yet this year)
Pro: Smooth trails, few braking bumps (I guess anybody arsed about taking a bike up the Pyrenees is a keen cyclist already). Nicely built trails too: Berms, jumps and whatnot. Very open terrain.
Con: Not so much vertical distance, meaning short runs. Lift is quite slow (non-detachable type lift and even at that, it wasn't running at full speed). Not so many trails.

Ax Les Thermes:
Pro: Two lifts, giving a vertical distance of 1300m - which is kind of epic. Very natural forest trails: Tight and twisty with plenty of trailside obstacles (I was constantly raising a pedal or pulling in an elbow to fit down the trail) makes things fun. Lower lift open until 7. Extensive choice for food and drink. Has a few more trails than other places in French Pyrenees.
Con: Very natural trails means few berms, jumps or other fun features. Hard to keep a good flow going on flat corners. Not so much trail maintenance makes the trail surface extremely punishing on rider and bike (One day there finished off my slightly loose shock top-bushing). Considering the distance and the terrain, attempting a non-stop descent is only a realistic option for the very fit and skilled. Tight and twisty with trailside obstacles means that if you get your line even a little bit wrong, you are near-certain to come out far more injured than you'd have chosen in an ideal world.

[FartingFury-]

So, did St Lary last weekend:

Pro: I'd forgotten how beautiful the trails are: There's one section that stands out in particular with huge berms overlooking the valley, so as you ride around all you can see beyond the top of the berm is either sky or the next mountain. The threat of falling off the edge of the world fairly concentrates your mind on getting around! Pretty epic. Some nice toys in the small-ish bike park which, unusually, caters to all abilities (much to my beneft!). They've built a few more trails covering technical rocky stuff, tight and twisty forest and regular dirt-track jumpy, bermy stuff (including one absolutely ricidulous drop-off). So there's enough variety for a full day now (as long as you're good enough to at least roll everything). The trails are mostly very smooth and flowing, plenty of jumps of all kinds, berms... all the good stuff. The guys at the lift station clearly like what they do and they've some got some music playing there - it makes a really good atmosphere.

Con: It has developed some braking bumps now - really not many though. They make very good use of their 400m vertical distance but there's no denying it's a (relatively) small hill. They're finally running the lift at what seems to be max speed but it's still a non-detachable and only every 2nd chair can take a bike. Result was 35mins queue and lift-time per 10 (ish?) minute run - that was an exceptionally busy day though: Sunny, blue-sky day (haven't been many of those this summer!) near the end of the season - so everybody was out. Lift closes at 4:30 and closes for an hour at lunchtime. Your lift pass is only good for two rides on the big cabin-lift from town to the station (i.e. once for the morning and once after lunch). There are some nice un-official trails (I mean, uh, so I've heard) on that part of the hill (800m vertical), but like I said, you only get your two shots.

[FartingFury-]

Nice video (including mental drop-off @ 1:55): http://www.26in.fr/videos/salta-monte.html

Not all of it is St Lary.