France

L'Alpe du Grand Serre

Off season
Official site

No snow yet. Snow depth and the seven-day outlook appear once snow is on the ground or forecast.

Typical snowfall
334cm

A weather-model figure, worked out the same way for every ski area, and lower than what actually falls. Use it to compare ski areas, not against the resort’s own totals. How we measure →

Elevation
1,363–2,166 m
Across
5.3 km

We do not show a snow depth here. The weather model we use reports snow lying on the ground — it knows nothing about grooming or snowmaking, and it is not the base depth a ski area publishes. In Japan we can check our figures against 234 weather stations. Outside Japan there is nothing to check them against, so we do not print a number we have not verified. Snow report on the official site ↗

L'Alpe du Grand Serre, in France, runs from 1,363 m at the base to 2,166 m at the top. Its mapped area is about 5.3 km across, with 52 marked runs and 14 lifts (about 37 km of piste in all).

Over the last twelve winters the ERA5 weather model gives it 334 cm of snowfall a season, 330th (tied) of 3,069 worldwide and 55th in France. It swings a lot from year to year: the biggest winter, 2017/18 (640 cm), brought more than twice as much as the leanest, 2014/15 (220 cm). December brings as much snow as January here (93 and 92 cm on average).

The nearest city of any size is Grenoble, about 22 km away in a straight line.

How much snow it gets

Modelled from weather data the same way at all 3,069 ski areas we cover. These are not the resort’s own published figures.

Seasonal snowfall
334cm
per season
Worst of 12 winters
220cm
The middle winter of the 12: 328 cm. The best: 640 cm.
World rank
330
of 3,069 worldwide
Rank in country
55
of 244 in France
Elevation rank
48
Highest to lowest, of 244 in France. The centre point sits at 1,935 m, 398 m above the national median.

Compared with what is nearby

Within 50 km in a straight line. Ski areas in the same weather-model cell (about 30 km across) get the same figure.

Ski areaDistanceSeasonal snowfallWorld rank
Col d'Ornon10.0 km326 cm378
Les Signaraux12.0 km135 cm1877
Domaine Skiable Chamrousse12.0 km339 cm309
Col de l'Arzelier20.0 km166 cm1457
Montagnes de Lans21.0 km155 cm1601

Runs and lifts

Counted from the runs and lifts drawn on OpenStreetMap, within the boundary of the ski area. These are not the resort’s own published figures.

Marked runs
52
Run length
37km
Lifts
14
Vertical
804m
Top 2,166 m · base 1,363 m

Run map

NoviceEasyIntermediateAdvanced Lift
North is up. Runs are coloured by difficulty; black lines are lifts.
Run map

Drag to move around, and use + and − to zoom. On a phone, swipe to move and pinch to zoom in further.

Slope shape, difficulty and lift types

The shape of the mountain

Longest run on the map2.0 km
Steepest pitch39°measured over at least 30 m
Average gradient of the runs12.4°

Which way the slopes face

North 53%
East 22%
South 13%
West 12%

75% of the vertical on the runs descends to the north or east; plenty of the terrain faces the sun as well, so the lean is modest.

By difficulty

Novice 6 · 2.5 km
Easy 28 · 20.1 km
Intermediate 16 · 12.7 km
Advanced 2 · 1.3 km

Lift types

  • Platter11
  • Chairlift3

See past trail maps on Skimap.org ↗

Source: OpenSkiMap (© OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL 1.0). How finely ski areas are drawn varies by region, so treat the counts as indicative. Vertical is the difference between the highest and lowest points of the mapped runs and lifts.

When it falls, and how winters differ

Month by month

The most snow falls in December. March brings 87% of January’s snowfall. That is a gentler fall than the median for ski areas in France (77%). In amount, March brings 80 cm, more than the median of 55 cm.

93cm
Dec
92cm
Jan
70cm
Feb
80cm
Mar
Average snowfall by month, last 12 winters

Winter by winter

Across the 12 winters measured, the average is 334 cm, and 6 of them fell short of it. The leanest was 2014/15 with 220 cm; the biggest was 2017/18 with 640 cm (2.9 times as much). For 26% of the 244 ski areas in France the leanest winter was 2016/17; here it was a different one.

220
224
233
640
313
406
366
272
265
343
344
382
14/1515/1616/1717/1818/1919/2020/2121/2222/2323/2424/2525/26

Snowfall each winter (December–March total). The dashed line is the average; the numbers mark the leanest and the biggest winter.

Live cameras

This ski area does not put a camera on its own slopes. What follows are nearby cameras, not the pistes themselves.

Footage remains the copyright of each operator. JAPANSNOWLINE neither stores nor redistributes it.

Some cameras here are provided by Windy.com. Footage plays in Windy’s own player; we do not store it. Windy.com

Map

The weather map, and where it sits among nearby ski areas.

Official piste map ↗

Other booking sites: Booking.com ↗ · Agoda ↗

Guides covering France

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