France

La Plagne

Off season
Official site

No snow yet. Snow depth and the seven-day outlook appear here once snow starts to fall. Until then, the long-run record comes first.

Typical snowfall
427cm
Elevation
1,217–3,058 m
Across
17 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 ↗

La Plagne, in France, runs from 1,217 m at the base to 3,058 m at the top. Its mapped area is about 17 km across, with 269 marked runs and 74 lifts (about 188 km of piste in all).

Over the last twelve winters the ERA5 weather model gives it 427 cm of snowfall a season, 137th (tied) of 3,069 worldwide and 8th in France. It swings a lot from year to year: the biggest winter, 2017/18 (792 cm), brought more than twice as much as the leanest, 2016/17 (294 cm). March still brings 101 cm on average, close to January, its snowiest month.

The nearest city of any size is Grenoble, about 85 km away in a straight line.

How much snow it gets

Measured by us across 3,069 ski areas by one identical method. These are not the resort’s own published figures.

Seasonal snowfall
427cm
per season
Worst of 12 winters
294cm
The middle winter of the 12: 391 cm. The best: 792 cm.
World rank
137
of 3,069 worldwide
Rank in country
8
of 244 in France
Elevation rank
39
Highest to lowest, of 244 in France. The centre point sits at 2,023 m, 486 m above the national median.

Compared with what is nearby

Within 50 km straight line. Measured the same way, so the ranks compare directly. The weather model works on cells about 30 km across; ski areas in the same cell get the same figure, and these numbers cannot separate them.

Ski areaDistanceSeasonal snowfallWorld rank
Paradiski4.9 km410 cm161
Domaine Nordique - Vallon de Champagny le Haut7.0 km392 cm190
Domaine Nordique Peisey-Vallandry7.3 km427 cmsame grid cell137
Les Arcs / Peisey-Vallandry11.0 km403 cm168
Courchevel12.0 km393 cm186

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
269
Run length
188km
Lifts
74
Vertical
1,841m
Top 3,058 m · base 1,217 m

Run map

NoviceEasyIntermediateAdvancedExpertFreerideOther 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 map6.0 km
Steepest pitch37°measured over at least 30 m
Average gradient of the runs10.7°

Which way the slopes face

North 39%
East 20%
South 16%
West 25%

59% 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 17 · 2.6 km
Easy 170 · 116.7 km
Intermediate 45 · 40.7 km
Advanced 27 · 19.3 km
Expert 5 · 7.1 km
Freeride 4 · 1.7 km
Other 1

Lift types

  • Chairlift29
  • Platter13
  • Gondola12
  • Drag lift10
  • Rope tow5
  • Magic carpet3
  • Cable car2

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

Month by month, the most snow falls in January. March brings 80% of January’s snowfall. That is in line with the median for ski areas in France (77%). In amount, March brings 101 cm, more than the median of 55 cm.

118cm
Dec
126cm
Jan
84cm
Feb
101cm
Mar
Average snowfall by month, last 12 winters

Winter by winter

Across the 12 winters measured, the average is 427 cm, and 8 of them fell short of it. The leanest was 2016/17 with 294 cm; the biggest was 2017/18 with 792 cm (2.7 times as much). For 26% of the 244 ski areas in France, the leanest winter was the same 2016/17: bad winters tend to hit a whole region at once.

312
374
294
792
461
559
422
376
406
444
324
360
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 ↗

More places to look

Guides covering France

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