SnowNews

Fresh Snow Kicks Starts French Alps

After between 20 and 50cm of fresh snow earlier in the week five more resorts will open in the French alps this weekend, at least partially. This will bring the total number of open resorts to ten. It is not all good news, strong southerly winds over the next few days will bring warmer weather and possibly rain to 2000 meters. Oh no!


l'Alpe d'Huez Web Cam on the 3,200 meter Pic Blanc

The following resorts will open their runs on Saturday morning: l'Alpe-d'Huez (Isère) which currently claims 25cm of snow at the bottom of the pistes, Courchevel (Savoie) and three resorts in the Hautes-Alpes (Risoul 1850, Vars and Les Orres). Tignes, Val-Thorens, Val d'Isère in the Savoie are already open. Les Deux Alpes and Montgenèvre in the Hautes-Alpes have taken advantage of recent snowfalls to open more runs. La Plagne is set to open on the 11th of December.

The commercial director of l'Alpe d'Huez, Christian Marie said that an early opening was good publicity but snow was guaranteed by some 720 snow canons. At la Plagne, which is the number one French resort in terms of turnover, they are expecting over 90% of the guests to stay for a number of days, amongst them 32% will be British. Resorts were also hoping to attract guests from eastern Europe, the Baltic states and Russia. L'Alpe d'Huez had some 12,000 guests from the Czech republic last season and 20% of the 170,000 passengers passing through the small Grenoble-Saint Geoirs last winter on ski charters were Russian.

posted by davidof @ 6:18 PM