Alpe d'Huez Snow Report: 24th January 2016
Note to self – get more suncream!
With a huge area of high pressure dominating the weather in the Alps it really has been wall to wall sunshine for the last few days here in resort.
The current high pressure (1033mb) covers an area from Portugal in the west, across to Greece in the east and from central Europe in the north down to central Africa in the south – it looks set to stay for the next few days at least with pressure even increasing to around 1038mb by Wednesday, bringing with it a rise in temperature of around 7 to 10degC at 1850metres (resort).
However it is worth keeping an eye on the movement of the storm that has bought widespread disruption to the United States over the past few days, indeed New York has had a dump of 75cm of snow in the past 36 hours and has ground to a halt. 3500 flights have been cancelled in the US, and early forecasts show this storm could track its way across the Atlantic towards northern Europe at the end of the week. This storm blizzard has wreaked havoc along the whole Eastern Seaboard in the USA, with around 80 million people affected.
Temperatures have been around -6degC at the top of the PicBlanc (3330metres), 2degC in Alpe d’Huez (1850metres) and 6degC over in Vaujany (1250metres), but with no wind to speak of and gloriously sunny conditions, temperatures have felt considerably warmer than this. It has been sun, sun and more sun this week in Alpe d’Huez – so make sure you bring plenty of suncream with you.
Snow cover currently stands at an impressive 200cm on the upper slopes (3330 metres) and 100cm on the lower slopes around resort (1850 metres). With no reportable snow since last Saturday (16th January) the pisteurs at SATASKI have been busy preparing and compacting all the snow that had already fallen, so more and more pistes have been opening each day.
The current Avalanche risk stands at 2 & 3 – moderate to considerable.
We currently have 108 pistes open out of a total 134 (80%) and 68 lifts out of a total of 74 (92%) in the whole of the Grande Domaine ski area – of these 40 are green, 32 blue, 28 red and 8 black – so there really is something to suit all abilities and tastes.
In Alpe d’Huez itself 31 lifts are in operation and 54 pistes are open. The snow park is now also open, although not quite the finished article yet, it is due for “full’ opening next weekend.
Thursday this week saw the opening of the popular black run Tunnel up at the top of the PicBlanc, but it is open with the “advice” from SATASKI of “good skiers only” – there are lots of moguls and the top section is very steep, so please bear this in mind – remember do you want to simply survive the tunnel or actually enjoy it?.
The Sarenne is in fantastic condition and isn't too busy at the moment, so get out there and take full advantage of this great snow cover.
With quality snow cover over the whole of the Grande Domaine ski area there are runs all the way down to the adjoining villages of Auris, Villard Reculas, Vaujany and Oz en Oisans – this obviously makes for nice short lift queues, which is great.
