Sun, sun and more sun in Alpe d'Huez

We welcome 2017 here in Alpe d’Huez with a similar weather pattern that has been prevalent for the past few weeks. We really haven’t seen a cloud in the sky here for what seems like a least a month or so now.

This has been largely due to a huge area of high pressure that has sat over the whole of the alps with barometric pressure pretty steady at around 1028/1030mb, which has ensured a very settled period of weather – this unfortunately has failed to deliver any snow, the last reportable snowfall here in resort was on 19th December 2016 and even then only a few centimetres fell.

There is an area of low pressure due in the region towards the end of the week and with this may come some more unsettled weather – and maybe some snow towards the weekend/early part of next week, but it’s a bit vague at the minute as other forecasters are giving a continuation in the sunny conditions. Winds look set to increase around Thursday, particularly at high altitudes, with gusts of around 30mph possible, and with this may come some intermittent lift closures or disruptions.

There is currently 90cm of snow covering the upper slopes in resort at 3300 metres and this reduces down to around 15cm on the slopes around resort at 1850 metres – there are no slopes open below resort level of 1850 metres. Though not great in depth, the lower slopes do have a good packed icy base below them, which is continuing to ensure that conditions on the pistes are surprisingly good.

There are currently 31 lifts in operation in the Grande Domaine ski area out of a possible 49 and as such lift queues are really short, which is always a bonus. Of these 31 lifts, 22 are in Alpe d’Huez itself.

These lifts are serving 40 pistes (out of 89) – of these 16 are green, 8 blue, 10 red and 6 are black runs. The famous black run Sarenne remains in good condition throughout, but the Tunnel black run is, when open, marked for “very good skiers only” – this is genuinely the case on this super-steep and mogully black run.

The pistes from 2100 metres down to resort level are in very condition, but are a lot narrower than normally would be the case at this time of year.

The best of conditions as you would expect are on the higher slopes, with those between the top of the DMC at 2700 metres and the PicBlanc at 3300 metres in better condition than the Marmottes slopes. Over the busy Christmas period these higher slopes were obviously quite busy, but I found the slopes between 2700 metres and 2100 metres on the DMC offered a better bet – a bit quieter and still in good condition.

Both the snowpark here in Alpe d’Huez and the smaller one over in Vaujany remain closed at the moment.

It is possible to ski down to both neighbouring villages of Oz and Villard Reculas – with the run down to Villard and the lovely mountain restaurant La Bergerie, whilst being quite narrow is in good condition.

The avalanche risk currently stands at its lowest rating – 1 = low.

There are 9km of Nordic trails open and 1km of walking trails (up to Lac Besson) open – this walk up to the lake is fantastic if you are a non-skier or fancy a day away from the slopes.

Resort got a lot quieter over the weekend as the busy holiday period drew to a close and the schools begin to return across Europe. Suddenly the roads were back to normal and you could find a parking space a lot easier than had been the case over Christmas and New Year!

Wishing you all a happy new year and good skiing – Rob.