The Best Snow Sure Resorts In France
Finding a true snow sure ski area is a big factor in locating your perfect ski holiday resort. Fortunately, France's mountains are choc-full of them.
Along with the world's biggest ski areas, French resorts tend to stretch up higher than in most other Alpine nations, so temperatures stay lower.
Many of the best-known ski areas even have glaciers where the snow lasts year-round. Indeed, several are so snow sure they re-open for skiing and snowboarding in summer! Whether there's a glacier or not, high-altitude slopes have everything going for them when it comes to snow quantity and quality. Late summer and autumn snowfall up high tends to last when it melts on the slopes of lower resorts. Snowmaking machines get the cold temperatures they need to fire up earlier than at lower elevations. The snowfall itself holds its light, powdery quality longer and normally the snow builds deeper through the winter and lasts late into spring.
All this means a snow sure resort is good news all season long, but particularly essential if you plan to hit the slopes before Christmas, or around Easter, or later.
Here are some of the best snow sure ski resorts in France:
Tignes
Tignes boasts the longest ski season in France, thanks to its Grande Motte glacier, where the lifts climb as high as 3,500 metres above sea level – among the highest in the Alps. The runs usually open in early October and remain so through to mid-May the following year, when it is one of the last in the country to close. In fact, it is so snow sure this is one of only three of France’s ski resorts to re-open for summer skiing and boarding in June and July.
Courchevel
Courchevel has a reputation as one of France’s most luxurious ski resorts, and for being part of the world’s biggest ski regions, the Three Valleys, but it is also known for its great snow and reliable snow sure cover. First up, the resort is high, at up to 1850 metres and the lifts climb to 3,000m above it. Then the slopes are mostly north-facing, shaded from the direct rays of the sun. It’s also one of the world’s biggest snowmakers, with more than 700 snow cannons trained on the slopes to lay down a base and top up when necessary and if all that’s not enough it even practices snowfarming, a technique of stockpiling snow from the previous season to spread back on the slopes to form a base the following autumn without needing to wait for natural snowfall or cold enough weather for the snow guns to be able to work.
La Plagne
La Plagne has a great range of village bases from low in the valley to high on the slopes but they all share fast access to the Bellecôte glacier at 3,000m, high above. This famously snow sure upper part of the resort's ski area is enjoying a massive multi-year investment in upgrades to lifts and slopes which will make the highest part of the slopes at one of the world's biggest ski resorts even better.
La Clusaz
La Clusaz is the exception in our list of recommendations as its highest lifts top out below 3,000m but it is a good example of a ski resort created a century or so ago because the locals realised it had a great reputation as a snow sure resort with the bonus that it was easy to get to. That's because La Clusaz lies in a region famed for its abundant snow and actually posts some of the best snowfall stats in the whole Haute Savoie region, greater than resorts with higher slopes in the region. The La Balme sector invariable gets the most snow as it is the highest and faces due North.
Val d'Isère
Undisputed as not only one of France’s but also one of the world’s great ski resorts, Val d'Isère has the same snow sure reputation as its neighbour Tignes and is another of the three resorts in France which offer summer glacier skiing. Its reputation for fabulous skiing is bolstered by its famous powder snow and that’s a result of a favourable geographic location, slope orientation and those high-altitude runs with lifts climbing above 3,450 metres here.
Val Thorens
Val Thorens is famous for being France’s and indeed Europe’s highest ski resort, located at 2,300 metres, looking down on the world’s biggest ski region, the 3 Valleys, with its 600km (375 miles) of slopes. The ski lifts climb nearly 1,000 vertical metres higher and Val Thorens is so snow sure you can ski to the resort for six months of the year, from mid-November to mid-May. It’s France’s second longest winter season after Tignes. They’re so confident of their snow sure status that Val Thorens organise big festival weekends to celebrate the start of the season (La Grande Première) and the end (La Grande Dernière) each season.
France's Top Snow Sure Ski Resorts
There you have it! Would you add any other resorts to this list? Some of the team believe Avoriaz should be on the list, given the snow levels and snow cannon reach across the Portes du Soleil. What do you think?