Environmentally friendly snow clearing in Alpe d'Huez

It's a mammoth effort to keep the roads and paths clear here in Alpe d'Huez and thankfully it's environmentally friendly as well.

It's not like back in the UK where after a bit of snowfall its simply pushed to the side of the road and after a couple of days it melts away and that’s the end of it, here in Alpe d’Huez its snows, snows and keeps snowing. The snow simply can't be pushed to one side as the next melt period could well be a few months away (in the case of early season snow).

So when it snows here in resort the snow clearers and removers spring into action to keep the town moving, and prevent it from being buried under an accumulation of the white stuff.

Firstly the roads are cleared to keep traffic moving, the snow is dozed into huge stockpiles around town, then the footpaths and so on. Once it's all cleared and things are back to relative normality, the removal process starts – you will regularly see a fleet of large lorries laden with snow driving around town after a significant dump (normally a day or so after).

These have been loaded with snow from the stockpiles, these lorries then drive around 1km down the mountain (On the alternate road out of town – not the main road) and tip the snow from high into the Sarenne Gorge, there are around 5 or 6 dump points along the road. This keeps the town clear, ready for the next big dump.

And it's not just a matter of dumping the snow anywhere, it's planned to be environmentally friendly as well. The streams of the Sarenne gorge into which this snow eventually melts, feed their way into the Romanche River down at Bourg d’Oisans and begin to flow towards Grenoble. It's on this journey towards Grenoble just outside the town of Vizille that the Romanche River, with it's flow swelled by the now melted snow, flows through a hydro-electric plant, so the flow of the river produces green electricity. This electric is then fed into the French National Grid, a truly green way to produce electricity and keeps the town moving as well.

So the next time it snows just think that before long the snow that’s falling will be providing electricity.

Watch the video to see the process in more detail……