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'Love'ly conditions on the mountain this week

Great snow cover & all the lifts are now open

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

If love is in the air this week it must be due to the huge area of high pressure that sits across the whole of the Alps at the moment, centred over Italy, it pretty much covers the whole of Southern Europe.

It has brought with it nice settled weather conditions, we did have a very light dusting of snow on Thursday night, It was a strange snowfall, bits fell here and there. Auris had around 8cm, town centre had a couple of centimetres and where I live at the lower end of resort had nothing.

a ski lift in alpe dhuez

Barometric pressure stands at around 1028mb at the moment and looks to increase to around 1032mb over the next few days. This will continue the settled weather, with a bit more sunshine likely as well. Wind will remain extremely light, which is great. This weather pattern looks set to remain in place for the next 5 to 7 days at least and with great snow conditions this will be genuinely lovely.

There is no snow in the forecast for the next 7 days at least. Temperatures are getting up to around +5degC at the moment and these should increase in the afternoons to around +7degC by the end of the week thanks to the area of high pressure.

Snow cover in the Grande Domaine ski area currently stands at around:

Alpe d’Huez resort 1850m – 100cm
PicBlanc 3300m – 200cm
Auris village – 65cm
Auris Signal – 100cm
Villard Reculas - 60cm
Vaujany town – 20cm
Oz-en-Oisans – 55cm
Dome-des-Rousses – 150cm
Montfrais – 55cm

ski tracks in deep snow

Off-piste depths are:

2500m North facing areas – 180cm
2500m South facing – 130cm
1500m North – 60cm
1500m South – 40cm

Snow cover currently lies all the way down to 1000 metres elevation, which is well below even the very lowest slopes of the Grande Domaine ski area.

Today we had EVERY SINGLE lift working, that's 69 out 69 in the whole ski area and with it being UK half term this week, that is helping to keep lift queues down to a busy but acceptable level.

These 69 lifts are serving a season high 109 pistes (out of 116) – these are as follows:

Green pistes 40 (out of 40)
Blue 29 (29)
Red 29 (31)
Black 11 (16)

Avalanche risk currently stands a 3, which is CONSIDERABLE across the whole of the ski area, and after the tragic recent incident in Tignes, please be careful out there. If you are in any doubt seek advice from the nearest SATA “liftie” or mountain rescue guys (wearing black and orange outfits) or ask a ski instructor. Remember to respect the mountain.

walkers on a path on the snow

There are currently 40km of Nordic trails open (out of 50km) and in addition to this there are 30km of walking trails open (out of 41km) and these are well worth exploring if you fancy a day away from the slopes. The walking trail up to Lac Besson, from the DMC lift area, is truly fabulous and the views are epic.

Snow cover across the whole of the ski area is really good, so there’s no real advantage in any particular area over another one. But with is being the uber-busy half term period (this continues in France for another 2 weeks yet), try looking further afield for your skiing than the Alpe d’Huez “bowl” area itself. A favourite of mine is always across the scare chair to Auris, it’s always much quieter over there as it is down around Villard Reculas as well. [Piste Map].

I have long advised readers to ski during the ski school lunch break, between 12pm and 2.30pm generally. Take advantage of the shorter lift queues in this 2.5 hour window of opportunity, it really does make a difference, simply take a late lunch break.

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Location

Map of the surrounding area