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.
- Elevation
- 1,158–2,444 m
- Across
- 8.9 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 ↗
Les Contamines, in France, runs from 1,158 m at the base to 2,444 m at the top. Its mapped area is about 8.9 km across, with 65 marked runs and 25 lifts (about 58 km of piste in all).
Over the last twelve winters the ERA5 weather model gives it 462 cm of snowfall a season, 104th of 3,069 worldwide and 2nd in France. It swings a lot from year to year: the biggest winter, 2017/18 (780 cm), brought more than twice as much as the leanest, 2016/17 (320 cm). January is usually the snowiest month, with about 139 cm.
The nearest city of any size is Geneva, about 63 km away in a straight line. Below are links to its official live camera.
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.
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 area | Distance | Seasonal snowfall | World rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Megève/Saint-Gervais | 6.2 km | 427 cm | 137 |
| Evasion Mont Blanc | 6.5 km | 355 cm | 275 |
| Espace Diamant (Les Saisies) | 11.0 km | 342 cm | 302 |
| Les Houches (Chamonix) | 11.0 km | 429 cm | 135 |
| Les Portes du Mont-Blanc | 13.0 km | 332 cm | 345 |
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.
Run map
Slope shape, difficulty and lift types
The shape of the mountain
Which way the slopes face
69% 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
Lift types
- Chairlift9
- Platter8
- Gondola4
- Drag lift4
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 78% of January’s snowfall. That is in line with the median for ski areas in France (77%). In amount, March brings 109 cm, more than the median of 55 cm.
Winter by winter
Across the 12 winters measured, the average is 462 cm, and 7 of them fell short of it. The leanest was 2016/17 with 320 cm; the biggest was 2017/18 with 780 cm (2.4 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.
Snowfall each winter (December–March total). The dashed line is the average; the numbers mark the leanest and the biggest winter.
Live cameras
Footage remains the copyright of each operator. JAPANSNOWLINE neither stores nor redistributes it.
More places to look
Guides covering France
- A Black Run in Colorado and a Black Run in Austria Are Not the Same Thing. The Maps Prove It. Across 2,888 ski areas: 39% of American runs are graded advanced or harder, and 9% of Austrian ones. Nobody thinks Austria is four times gentler. The grades are measuring different things.
- How Big Are Japan's Ski Areas? Smaller Than the Alps, Snowier per Kilometre Measured across nearly 1,800 ski areas: the median Japanese one has 12 km of piste against France's 25. What Japan has instead is 25 cm of seasonal snow for every kilometre of run — more than two and a half times France and three times the United States.