France

Pralognan-la-Vanoise

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
393cm
Elevation
1,406–2,336 m
Across
4.4 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 ↗

Pralognan-la-Vanoise, in France, runs from 1,406 m at the base to 2,336 m at the top. Its mapped area is about 4.4 km across, with 41 marked runs and 12 lifts (about 25 km of piste in all).

Over the last twelve winters the ERA5 weather model gives it 393 cm of snowfall a season, 186th (tied) of 3,069 worldwide and 21st in France. It swings a lot from year to year: the biggest winter, 2017/18 (678 cm), brought more than twice as much as the leanest, 2016/17 (261 cm). March still brings 93 cm on average, close to January, its snowiest month.

The nearest city of any size is Turin, about 81 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
393cm
per season
Worst of 12 winters
261cm
The middle winter of the 12: 373 cm. The best: 678 cm.
World rank
186
of 3,069 worldwide
Rank in country
21
of 244 in France
Elevation rank
58
Highest to lowest, of 244 in France. The centre point sits at 1,890 m, 353 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
Domaine Nordique - Vallon de Champagny le Haut7.9 km392 cm190
Courchevel8.5 km393 cmsame grid cell186
Les 3 Vallées13.0 km375 cm215
La Plagne14.0 km427 cm137
Aussois15.0 km353 cm280

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
41
Run length
25km
Lifts
12
Vertical
930m
Top 2,336 m · base 1,406 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 map2.5 km
Steepest pitch34°measured over at least 30 m
Average gradient of the runs11.4°

Which way the slopes face

North 6%
East 9%
South 23%
West 62%

Only 15% of the vertical on the runs descends to the north or east. More of the terrain faces the sun.

By difficulty

Novice 19 · 7.5 km
Easy 6 · 7.4 km
Intermediate 11 · 5.7 km
Advanced 5 · 4.7 km

Lift types

  • Drag lift7
  • Chairlift4
  • Cable car1

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 93 cm, more than the median of 55 cm.

107cm
Dec
116cm
Jan
79cm
Feb
93cm
Mar
Average snowfall by month, last 12 winters

Winter by winter

Across the 12 winters measured, the average is 393 cm, and 7 of them fell short of it. The leanest was 2016/17 with 261 cm; the biggest was 2017/18 with 678 cm (2.6 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
261
678
399
487
403
349
347
398
342
371
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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