Alpe d'Huez Snow Report: 21st February 2016

With an area of high pressure covering the whole of the alpine region (1016mb), the weather looks set to remain settled for the next few days, with pressure remaining at around 1020mb. There is the forecast of snow of Monday night/Tuesday morning – with around 10 to 15cm predicted to fall.

Temperatures in resort have risen to around 5 to 7 degC in the afternoons and look set to remain at around this level, whilst temperatures up at the PicBlanc (3,300metres) are at around 0degC in the afternoons.

There was a light fall of snow on Friday evening/Saturday morning, with around 5cm falling here in resort, and a little bit more up at altitude. Snow cover currently stands at 145cm on the lower slopes of resort (1850metres) and an impressive 300cm (10 feet!!!!!) up at 3,300metres at the top of the PicBlanc. The snow condition is truly fantastic.

The resort is virtually 100% in operation now with 72 out of 74 lifts in operation (2 lifts currently not running in Vaujany) and 122 pistes out of 134 open in the Grande Domaine ski area. Of these pistes 43 are green, 36 blue, 30 red and 13 black. In Alpe d'Huez itself there are 35 lifts (out of 35!!) in operation, serving 62 pistes (out of 68). All of the black runs at the top of the PicBlanc are open with the tunnel, Sarenne and glacier all in fantastic condition.

There are 44km of Nordic trails and 30km of walking trails currently open in the Grande Domaine ski area.

Resort is still very busy, even though the bulk of the U.K school holiday families are back at school after this weekend. However the French school holidays are still ongoing for another fortnight, in their phased process. In fact this week it's the turn of zones A & C to take their holidays, which is in fact this area as a whole (Zone A – South, West and Central France and Zone C –Paris area). Where I live here in resort there was a noticeable increase in the number of French cars that arrived on Friday evening/Saturday morning – so resort looks set to be busy this week.

So, as has been the case for the past few weeks of school holidays you need to ski a bit cleverer, try and avoid the main lift centres of Les Bergers and the DMC, particularly at ski school start times in the mornings and afternoons.

Another tip is to continue skiing through the ski school lunch break – when the slopes are noticeably quieter – so take your break either before or after the that of the ski schools.

For the last week or so I have been doing most of my skiing over in Auris-en-Oisans (across on the scare chair) where it is so much quieter than here in Alpe d’Huez – you really wouldn't believe your are in the same ski area, so much shorter are the lift queues, it really is worth popping across – the lift only takes 5 minutes.

The days are getting much longer now with today's sunrise at 7.28am and sunset at 6.12pm – and with moonrise at 5.09pm, you have the great sensation of brilliant sunshine and the moon out at the same time!