Alpe d’Huez sits at 1,860 m on a south-facing plateau in the Oisans, above the Romanche valley. The plateau catches sun for most of the day, which is the resort’s defining feature and also its limitation: spring snow softens early on the lower slopes.
How to get there: Grenoble Alpes-Isère airport is 100 km away, Lyon-Saint-Exupéry 150 km, both with shuttle connections into the Oisans. The road up from the valley is the one the Tour de France climbs: 13.8 km at an average gradient of 8.1 %.
Slopes and lifts: 250 km of runs, 111 trails in all, served by 67 lifts and backed by 1,053 snow guns and 27 snow ploughs. The ski area reaches 3,330 m at the Pic Blanc.
The Sarenne: from the summit of the Pic Blanc the Sarenne descends 16 km without a break. The resort describes it as the longest black run in Europe.
For beginners: there are dedicated learning areas with wide, safe runs, which is unusual for a resort that also holds a run like the Sarenne.
What else there is: snowboarding and snowparks, snowshoeing, dog sledding, paragliding and an alpine coaster.
Where you stay: the resort is built on the plateau rather than strung along a valley, so the walk to a lift is short from almost anywhere, and hotels, residences and apartments sit among the shops rather than apart from them.
