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The final week of the season has arrived

Snow cover is holding up on the higher pistes

featured in Snow report Author Rob Wood, Alpe d'Huez Reporter Updated

It’s the last week of the season here in Alpe d’Huez and up high conditions are still pretty good.

Well the fat lady has began her preparations for a bit of singing at the weekend here in Alpe d’Huez as we are now into the last week of the season and although the end is near, we did have a little bit if fresh snow on Sunday up on there very highest of the slopes.

Around 10cm fell up at the top of the PicBlanc (3,300 metres), but with a freezing point of around 3,000 metres, it really was only the very highest of the slopes that got some fresh snow.

Sunday saw the final day of the slopes over in Auris being open along with the slopes down to Villard Reculas closing also. So now it pretty much is only Alpe d’Huez itself that is open, with a couple of pistes in Vaujany and Oz still soldiering on.

The Grande Domaine ski area is now being served by 33 lifts which are servicing 46 pistes. Of these pistes 13 are green, 12 blue, 16 red and 5 black. Out of these 20 of the lifts are in Alpe d’Huez itself and 30 of the pistes.

With temperatures getting up to around +12degC in the afternoons it really is only worth heading up to the higher slopes. Basically you need to concentrate on the slopes from the top of the PicBlanc at 3,300 metres down to the top of the DMC lift at 2,700 metres, as these are in better condition than those from the Marmotte3 lift station.

And with temperatures on the increase and a freezing point of around 3,000 metres even the very highest of the pistes are getting a bit softer as the days go on – but on the whole the conditions up high are pretty good.

You can still ski all the way to resort level at 1,850 metres, with the green run Les Jeux providing the best of the conditions on the lower pistes that are still open.

Snow cover now stands at 170cm on the upper slopes of the PicBlanc at 3,300 metres and at 62cm on the lower slopes of resort at 1,850 metres. On the lower slopes it is very “stripy” now with virtually no snow cover off to the sides of the pistes.

As has been the case for the past few weeks it's been quite cloudy on the whole of late, which has in main been due to the continued presence of relatively low barometric pressure, around 1015mb, and it's forecast to remain at this level for the next week or so. The upside to the cloud cover has been the snow has remained in a better condition than it would have if it had been wall to wall sunshine, which it often is here in Alpe d’Huez at this time of year.

The upper part of the Sarenne black run is still in very good condition, but the lower section (in the gorge) is beginning to deteriorate a little bit, particularly later on in the day.

Avalanche risk currently stands at 2 moderate.

There are still 9km of Nordic and 4km of walking trails open.

Away from the slopes its major shop sales time here, with discounts of anything between 30 and 70% being offered by the shops, so there really are some great bargains to be had this week before the closing of the lifts at the weekend.

Last weekend saw a few of the bars beginning to close (Smithys Tavern etc), but there are still plenty of places open, but undoubtedly the season is coming to an end.

Sunrise this mooring was at 6.45am and sunset at 8.27pm – so the days really are getting lovely and long here now.

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