I visited Alpe d’Huez in January 2006 with the Ski Club of Great Britain.

Alpe d’Huez is famous for the longest pisted run in the Alps - ‘Sarenne’ at 18.7km and also one of the hardest ‘Tunnel’. Both of these runs start off from the top of the Pic Blanc cable car. The top part of the Sarenne run is quite tricky but the bottom is a fairly flat path along the valley floor.

The complete ski area covers 10000 hectares and has 84 ski lifts serving 245 km of market pisted runs. The runs are graded as 38 green runs, 32 blue, 34 red and 7 blacks. The area is split into four areas - Alpe d’Huez, Auris, Oz/Vaujany and Villard-Reculas so when you are out skiing make sure that you are aware of the last lifts back to the part of the resort you are staying in.

Just before we arrived in resort there was some strong winds which cleared a lot of the laying snow from the slopes. During the week despite the hard work put in by the pisteurs some of the runs were getting quite thin with snow particularly the Sarenne run. Fortunately for the guests arriving when we left snow fell the following week by the bucket load vastly improving the snow conditions.