France

Les Hautes Combes

Off season

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

Typical snowfall
199cm

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
1,250–1,251 m
Across
1.2 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.

Les Hautes Combes, in France, runs from 1,250 m at the base to 1,251 m at the top. Its mapped area is about 1.2 km across, with 1 marked run.

Over the last twelve winters the ERA5 weather model gives it 199 cm of snowfall a season, 1,158th (tied) of 3,069 worldwide and 152nd in France. It swings a lot from year to year: the biggest winter, 2017/18 (360 cm), brought more than 3 times as much as the leanest, 2022/23 (120 cm). January is usually the snowiest month, with about 66 cm.

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
199cm
per season
Worst of 12 winters
120cm
The middle winter of the 12: 182 cm. The best: 360 cm.
World rank
1158
of 3,069 worldwide
Rank in country
152
of 244 in France
Elevation rank
193
Highest to lowest, of 244 in France. The centre point sits at 1,218 m, 319 m below 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
Lajoux2.6 km213 cm1022
Mijoux - La Faucille4.2 km223 cm926
La Serra6.2 km237 cm810
Les Moussières6.9 km182 cm1298
Longchaumois Rosset10.0 km210 cm1057

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
1
Vertical
1m
Top 1,251 m · base 1,250 m

Run map

Other 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 map0.0 km
Average gradient of the runs5.3°

Which way the slopes face

North 100%
East 0%
South 0%
West 0%

100% of the vertical on the runs descends to the north or east. Those slopes get the least sun, so the snow lasts longer.

By difficulty

Other 1

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 January. March brings 64% of January’s snowfall. That is a steeper fall than the median for ski areas in France (77%): the snow here is concentrated early in the season. In amount, March brings 42 cm, less than the median of 55 cm.

52cm
Dec
66cm
Jan
40cm
Feb
42cm
Mar
Average snowfall by month, last 12 winters

Winter by winter

Across the 12 winters measured, the average is 199 cm, and 6 of them fell short of it. The leanest was 2022/23 with 120 cm; the biggest was 2017/18 with 360 cm (3.0 times as much). For 26% of the 244 ski areas in France the leanest winter was 2016/17; here it was a different one.

162
153
155
360
217
222
278
201
120
136
147
232
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.

Map

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

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